


What Can't Be

by sisstrider



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angels, Chaos, Demons, Law, M/M, References To Homestuck, everyone is referred to by their first name
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-01-12 18:14:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1194741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisstrider/pseuds/sisstrider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the longest time, angels and demons have been at war, fighting on the side of order and chaos respectively.</p><p>Kiyotaka Ishimaru is the head guard of the angel heir, Makoto Naegi. All his life, he's protected him, something he equates with protecting order itself.</p><p>Nagito Komaeda is the demon heir, ignored by his family and treated less like the heir than his cousin is. </p><p>One day, he is given the order to go assassinate Makoto, only to get arrested for his troubles by the heir's personal guard.</p><p>Things happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nagito Shows A Guy His Stabs

**Author's Note:**

> note: this universe is pretty much detached from time. it has vaguely 16th century elements like palaces and cobblestones, and then things like monitors and keycard/fingerprint scanners right along side them.
> 
> like in trigger happy havoc, everyone is referred to by their first name, with no honorifics.

It was impossible for order and chaos to exist together, at least peacefully. The two forces could clash, and they had for eons, but coexisting was an impossible goal. They were compelled by some invisible force, maybe the laws of reality itself, to continually throw themselves against each other until one was destroyed. Order and chaos were complete opposites, after all. Chaos brought about change, free will, and pretty much doing whatever the hell you wanted. Order was the opposite of those things. For the record, neither of them was inherently better or worse than the other, despite what many thought. This still held true even when you were presented with the idea that the angels were aligned with order, and the demons with chaos. You would think that the angels would be good and the demons would be evil, but that was a very superficial way of looking at things. The actual politics were much more complex.

* * *

The Citadel, capital of Perspi, lay in the land’s exact center. Everything was set up in a grid of perfectly square rows and columns, except for the lands surrounding the palace, in the Imperial District. That district was set up like a giant wheel, streets radiating off the palace in spokes. It was supposed to be the ultimate manifestation of order, where nothing out of the ordinary ever happened — no, could ever happen. And nobody appreciated this more than Makoto Naegi, the heir of Perspi.

Every day at eleven in the morning, the heir would take a walk along the outer rim of the Imperial District. Nothing ever changed about the area, but he took his walk nonetheless because it was part of his routine. As one of the most powerful angels, order had a special grip on him, and his habits were notoriously rooted into his mind. However, as far as habits went, there was one more habitual than he was. And as Makoto stood outside the palace, waiting, he could hear him arriving.

“Sir! Good morning!” exclaimed another angel as he approached the heir. “Everything is just fine, isn’t it?”

“I told you, you don’t have to call me Sir. Makoto will do just fine,” replied Makoto with a hint of exasperation. He had tried to explain that countless times, but it had never really worked. He was getting somewhere, though, or at least he hoped. “And of course everything’s just fine! We’re in the Imperial District, the war can’t get us from here. Any news about Drose, Kiyotaka?”

The person who had come up to him was the head of his personal guard. His name was Kiyotaka Ishimaru, and holy shit did he love order. Really. In all his life, Makoto had never seen anyone as passionate about their alignment as he was, not even his father, the king of the angels. Perhaps Kiyotaka would make a better heir than Makoto, but that was not how things worked. Makoto was the heir, and not anyone else. The natural balance of things could not be disrupted just because someone was more fond of order.

“Drose is still fighting to take control of our lands, but we will win! I just know it!” Kiyotaka exclaimed. Makoto realized with a sigh that Kiyotaka sounded just like the nationalistic Perspin propaganda that was prevalent in the city. It should have been a relief to see that his country could be kept at ease, but Makoto was honestly worried. Personally, he had doubts that they would win the war, and yet Kiyotaka had never entertained such a thought. The reasons that Kiyotaka should rule instead of him were really starting to pile up.

“Do you know how much land they took?” Makoto asked. It was confidential information, but someone of Kiyotaka’s station had more than enough of the right to know it. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Yesterday, we had to give up a city that had been besieged for a year. Drose has a long way to go until they can get to our Citadel, but I’m worried...”

“Impossible!” Kiyotaka exclaimed, giving his wings a distressed flap. “We have to fight harder!”

Makoto only nodded. Everybody knew that already, but the real question was, would the angel forces really be capable of fighting harder? They could only hope. “And to think, Drose was once just a rebel town...”

“Yes! Millenia ago, Drose was corrupted by some malevolent force of chaos, and the inhabitants were turned into demons! They decided that they were going to overthrow our government and let chaos reign, and they’ve been fighting their way to our Citadel ever since! We’re trying our hardest to destroy them, but Drose has taken enough land to be recognized as their own nation with their own capital. This war will only end with us destroying their capital, or them destroying ours,” Kiyotaka said.

“Thank you for repeating what everyone learns in school,” Makoto said flatly. “Huh, you even recited it word-for word. That’s impressive, I guess...”

“Well, shall we begin our walk?” Kiyotaka looked down at his watch and almost screamed. “We spent an extra fifteen minutes talking in front of the palace today! That is completely against routine! What if chaos enters the District because of it?” He threw himself down in front of Makoto. “I’m so sorry, you should execute me now!”

Makoto blinked and helped him up instead of executing him. “No, it’s fine, it’s fine, that’s not chaotic enough for anything bad to happen. If it makes you feel better, we can fly to the outer rim of the District and make up for lost time like that.” Without waiting for a response, he spread his wings and flapped into the air, heading for the District’s edge.

For several seconds, Kiyotaka just stood there, enthralled by Makoto’s flight. As the heir and one of the most powerful angels, his wings were things of beauty, things that could make others stop and stare. At least Kiyotaka did. Snapping himself out of it, he flew after Makoto. “Sir, you have a majestic wingspan!” he exclaimed once he had caught up to the other angel.

“Um...thank you?” Makoto replied, slightly uncomfortable with the praise. Really, this wasn’t as bad as the time Kiyotaka had asked him to get naked for some reason. That had been all but wiped from his memory, it had traumatized him that much. He respected Kiyotaka as a friend, but if anything got too uncomfortable for him, Makoto wouldn’t hesitate to fire him and issue a restraining order. Grasping for an excuse to end this strange conversation, he said, “We’re almost at the edge of the District, I’m going to dive.” Without another word, he angled down and executed a swift dive for the cobblestone path. Not wanting to be so far away from the heir he was supposed to protect, Kiyotaka followed close after him.

They landed on the street and began their walk. As usual, Makoto admired the scenery of the District’s edge and allowed all concerns about the war to leave him. Instead, he focused on the simple beauty of the streets. The inner edge of the road was lined with trees, and the outer edge was lined with bushes. Everything was perfect, exact, and orderly — just what you’d expect at the heart of the Citadel. He was so at peace here that nothing could disturb him, not even Kiyotaka’s attempts at conversation, which always failed in one way or another. He didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, either, like a nearby bush rustling even though the day wasn’t windy enough to blow the plants around.

However, as someone who had been trained nearly his entire life to fight, and to fight to defend and protect the heir, specifically, Kiyotaka noticed it all. The rustling of the bush. The dark-winged figure who rose out of it. The flash of steel as they lunged towards Makoto.

“Sir! Watch out!” Kiyotaka shoved Makoto to the side, but the attacker was too swift and the blade plunged into Makoto’s chest. The stab had certainly been aimed at his heart, but Kiyotaka’s movement had diverted the knife a few inches to the side. “Demon assassin!” Kiyotaka screamed out, and tackled the attacker. The knife was wrenched out of Makoto, accompanied by a spurt of blood.

The attacker’s wings beat heavily as he tried to fly away and escape from Kiyotaka. He was faster than Kiyotaka, but also weaker, and so his attempt at escape didn’t go anywhere. Kiyotaka’s wings flapped as well as he tried to gain leverage against the attacker, and soon their fight devolved into a massive slap fight with wings. However, Kiyotaka was at least able to knock the weapon away in the struggle, and when the attacker tried to get down and retrieve his knife, reinforcements finally arrived and tackled the demon to the ground. There were so many guard angels on him that Kiyotaka thought the attacker was going to be crushed to death.

“We’ve got this!” exclaimed one of the guards as they all piled off the now subdued attacker. She handcuffed the demon and the guards led him away.

With that taken care of, Kiyotaka was finally able to attend to Makoto. Someone had removed his overcoat and bandaged him up, and the coat was lying next to him. Pocketing the knife the assassin had used, Kiyotaka carefully picked up Makoto and started down the closest road to the palace. This had to be his fault, detaining Makoto for those extra fifteen minutes really had invited enough chaos for a demon assassin to enter the Imperial District.

“Sir, you should have executed me when you could...” he said. Of course, Makoto did not respond, since he was unresponsive and possibly dead. People spoke in hushed tones as he passed, wondering what had happened to the heir. Was he going to survive this? Was this going to affect the morale of the people? And how was Makoto’s father the king going to handle this? Nobody knew the answer.

“Doctor!” yelled Kiyotaka as soon as he entered the palace. “Someone get a doctor over here! The heir has been injured!”

A doctor quickly came and flew away with Makoto, carrying him to his bedroom. Kiyotaka was left in the room outside, worriedly pacing in front of the door. He didn’t know what he would do without Makoto. The king joined him soon, having been informed by a servant as soon as Makoto had been brought to the palace.

“I tried to save him...” Kiyotaka said sullenly when he saw him. “We managed to apprehend the attacker, but I don’t know if Makoto will make it...”

“He has to,” the king said. His fierce tone took Kiyotaka aback. “Those rebellious brats cannot get away with an attack in the heart of our Citadel. That will send the wrong message to our people.” The king went over to the door and knocked once. “Open it, I’m here to see my son.”

“Excuse me, Your Majesty, but the heir is in bad condition,” the doctor replied, opening the door slightly. “Nobody can be allowed to see him until he is stable.”

“Do you know who I am?” the king asked, standing up very straight and glaring down at the doctor. As he was extremely tall, this was an intimidating technique. “I must see my son.”

The doctor gulped. “Well, I suppose he’s stable enough to be visited...” She opened the door, allowing the king and Kiyotaka to enter.

“What happened to him?” Kiyotaka blurted as soon as he saw his unconscious friend. “I don’t think he lost enough blood to be knocked out like this! He isn’t...dead, is he?”

“He’s not,” the king hurriedly replied. “There is no way a child of mine could be dispatched so easily by some common demon scum.”

“Well, the fact that a demon stabbed him means that the blade was infused with chaos energy,” the doctor explained. “His immune system is fighting hard to expel the chaos, and this is using all his energy. If he isn’t strong enough, he might...he might turn, or even die.”

“Turn? Turning would be worse!” Kiyotaka exclaimed. “If a powerful angel like him turns into a demon, we’ll have a hard time fighting him! And I’m sure nobody here wants to have to fight him!”

“I will do what I must,” the king replied. “But I won’t like it. How long until he regains consciousness?”

“He will wake up again when either the order or the chaos wins out,” the doctor answered. “An angel cannot live normally in a state of neutrality like this.”

Kiyotaka sighed, looking at Makoto once more. He knew that Makoto could overcome the chaos energy, but he still felt that he could have done more to protect him from the attacker. He could have even taken the blade himself. He was sure he had enough willpower to resist turning, and the country would be down one guard instead of down one heir. They would have been able to live with that.

“Makoto...” the king muttered, sinking down into a chair. He turned to look at the other people in the room and said, “Leave. I need some time alone with my son.”

“But Your Majesty, his condition might destabilize at any time,” the doctor pointed out. “Medical staff needs to be on hand at all times to administer treatment as soon as possible.”

“Once again, do you know who I am?” The king stood up and spread his wings, smacking Kiyotaka in the face in the process. “I am Byakuya Togami, the leader of this realm. You are in no position to tell me to do anything. Now, leave.”

The doctor forced herself to smile and speak pleasantly. “Well, if anything goes wrong, the monitors he’s hooked up to will start beeping. I hope you’ll forgive my intrusion then.” She backed out of the room, shoving Kiyotaka along with her, and slammed the door. “He’s devastated,” she commented as soon as the door was closed. “Honestly, I didn’t know he could care so much for someone else.”

“Who couldn’t care for Makoto, honestly?” Kiyotaka asked wistfully. “He’s always been so cheerful, I wouldn’t be surprised if he could brighten even his father’s spirits. He’s wonderful, isn’t —”

He was interrupted by the arrival of a guard, specifically the one who had handcuffed Makoto’s attacker. “Kiyotaka, sir! We managed to find out the identity of the assassin,” she informed him.

“Who is it?” Kiyotaka asked as soon as the words had left her mouth. He wanted to know who exactly was responsible for doing this to Makoto so he could feel a more personal animosity towards the demon. The other guard started back, surprised by his desperation. However, she composed herself quickly enough to reply.

“It’s the heir of Drose, Nagito Komaeda!”

* * *

The tower in the center of the palace was a luxurious apartment, the likes of which were usually reserved only for the king’s most important guests. However, this sumptuous appearance only served to mask the tower’s true purpose. It was a holding cell for the king’s most important political prisoners. The only access to the apartments was through the dungeons under the palace, and the door was well-guarded and locked with five different locks, a keycard scanner, and a fingerprint scanner. This ensured that the only an angel who was meant to open the door could open it, and not anybody else. The windows were fitted with specially reinforced glass, and opened onto ledges that guards constantly patrolled. For all purposes, it was the perfect example of a gilded cage.

This was the tower Nagito had been taken to once the guards had figured out who he was. It hadn’t been obvious that he was Drose’s heir, what with his more casual clothing, but he had acted like the demon of high status he was when guards had interrogated him. Previously, he had been imprisoned in the dungeons, but once the guards had realized his status, it became of paramount importance to make sure his position within the Citadel was secured. He might have had reinforcements within the city already, and if he escaped he might call them and march on the palace. Even if he didn’t, he had information on the layout of the Citadel and the Imperial District, and that information couldn’t be allowed to fall into the hands of demons.

It wasn’t like Nagito could do much of anything, though. He was surrounded by an order so rigid that subduing him would take practically no effort at all. The heart of Perspi tended to do that to demons. Prisoners taken on either side were as good as dead. All Nagito felt like doing was lie down in his room, staring out the window and rubbing the emerald pendant he wore. Apparently, emeralds had something to do with chaos, but he had no idea how.

He didn’t know if he had succeeded in killing Perspi’s heir. He had wounded him, all right, but that other angel had shoved the heir to the side, and Nagito had been unable to stab him in the heart for an almost certain kill. Maybe he had gotten a lung, or something, but he had heard the guards whisper about how they hoped the heir of Perspi would pull through and survive. So Nagito figured he had left Makoto in critical condition, on a fine line between life and death. He had always been pretty lucky, the heir might yet die. Then again, Makoto was said to be lucky, as well.

No matter what he made up to console himself, though, Nagito was still in a terrible position. He was trapped in the enemy’s stronghold, with no way to escape. Drose had essentially lost its heir, which could either strengthen the demons’ resolve in the war or weaken it. He would probably be forced to divulge information about his country, tortured if he didn’t give it up willingly enough, and eventually be executed after he ceased to provide useful information. And his mother probably wouldn’t care if that happened.

Hearing the sound of footsteps approaching, Nagito sat up. His wings twitched as he tried to rid them of the cramps he had gotten for lying on his back for so long. At least they hadn’t cuffed his wings. The guards had removed his handcuffs once he was safe inside the tower, as well. It was literally the least they could have done for him. The tower was so well-guarded that it really didn’t matter if he could fly or not. Even with his wings free, he wouldn’t be able to escape.

The door opened and the angel who had pushed Makoto out of the way entered. Kiyotaka had never seen the Drosen heir before, but now that he had he felt like he was going to be sick. Nagito looked like he was a mockery of Makoto, and since he had been the one to attack the Perspin heir, this similarity enraged Kiyotaka.

“Drose sent you to assassinate the heir? They must be desperate,” Kiyotaka said as he entered. “I don’t know if it’s a chaos thing, but Perspi wouldn’t be as stupid as to send an important person on a mission like this!”

“‘Sent?’ Drosen people aren’t too big on forcing others to do their bidding. I could be here on my own volition,” Nagito replied. However, he wasn’t. His mother had made him do it, and crossing her would condemn him to a fate worse than death. Since the angels believed that everyone in Drose was a malevolent entity hellbent on destroying everything, maybe he could work this to his advantage. “Except, I wasn’t. Mother sent me, and Auntie goes along with whatever she says.”

“Mother?” Kiyotaka asked. “Do you mean Queen Junko Enoshima of Drose?”

Nagito glared at him. “Are you saying you think I’m a bastard? Of course she’s my mother.”

“Well, no wonder she would use such underhanded techniques, then, like sending her own son into the Citadel to kill our heir! I don’t want to understand you rebel scum, honestly,” Kiyotaka commented, glaring down at Nagito.

Nagito leaped to his feet, unable to take an insult like that from the biggest hypocrite he had ever seen. He had known Kiyotaka for all of a minute, and he could already tell that he was a huge hypocrite. “Really? ‘Rebel scum?’ You Perspins aren’t any better, you’re all oppressors! You force everyone to comply to strict guidelines in the name of order...us demons aren’t the monsters you think we are. We’re just the only ones brave enough to fight against your oppressive regime! In fact, the fact that you’re fighting us shows how bad you are! You can’t accept that anyone would do things differently than you do!”

“You’re in a horrible position to say those kinds of things!” Kiyotaka retorted. “Since you’re in here for trying to assassinate Makoto, I refuse to listen to a word you say! If I had my way, I’d have had you executed as soon as possible! I can’t even stand looking at you, you’re like...a corrupted version of him!”

“Makoto...Makoto...Makoto.” Nagito smirked. “If I were you, I would tone down on the ‘undying love for Makoto’ bit.”

“I do not!” Kiyotaka quickly replied.

There was no undying love for the heir of Drose, though. Nobody loved him like that, and nobody ever would. His own family didn’t love him, so why would anyone else? “You love him enough to try to push him out of the way of my knife,” Nagito pointed out.

“I’m the head of his personal guard, it’s my job to protect him,” Kiyotaka explained. “Besides, I’m not good enough for Makoto! I’m not even nobility. But enough about that, what can you tell me about Drose’s war effort?”

At first, Nagito was unwilling to say a word on his country’s situation. The fact that he was the unloved heir had just been hammered in his face, and it still stung. And then he remembered that he was supposed to be trying to manipulate the guard into letting him go. “If you want strategy and formations, that isn’t how chaos works,” he finally said. “It’s safe for me to say this because on the battlefield, it’s already been established that order cannot comprehend how to deal with chaos. That, and my aunt’s the best military leader Drose has seen since the war’s begun. And her son, my cousin Hajime...he’s perfect, that’s what he is. He’s months older than me, and he’s already a general! Everyone knows that Mother would rather have Hajime as a son than me,” he finished spitefully.

Kiyotaka had started to feel sorry for the demon, but then he remembered the still form of Makoto lying on his bed, and all the pity he felt evaporated. “So...it seems the head of the military and her son are Perspi’s largest threats, then. Is that all you can tell me? If it is, excuse me while I arrange your execution right away.”

“Go ahead,” Nagito replied bitterly. “If you do that, Mother will probably just make Hajime the heir of Drose, just like she’s always wanted to.” Kiyotaka froze, trying to piece this together. If Hajime was as dangerous as Nagito had hinted he was, then getting rid of Nagito and inadvertently putting Hajime in a position of power would spell Perspi’s doom. Under Hajime’s leadership, the Drosen forces might rally and crush the angels. And maybe sparing Nagito’s life wasn’t enough, the queen of Drose might name Hajime as the new heir since her son was as good as gone. Perhaps it would be a good idea to let him go, after all.

“But...Makoto!” he said to himself. “Makoto would want you dead,” Kiyotaka said coldly, addressing Nagito now. “It would only be right if I carried out his wishes.”

“Yes, so if you would just let me go right now — wait, what?” Nagito fell backwards, his wings awkwardly crumpling beneath him. “Wait! I can tell you other things, but just not today! Don’t do this, I thought angels were supposed to be merciful!”

“There’s no reason to show mercy towards you,” Kiyotaka replied, “not after what you’ve done. Very well, then! I’ll return tomorrow.” Turning around, he left the room, leaving Nagito to sit and contemplate his emerald necklace again.

As far as manipulation went, that had gone horribly. For a moment there, Nagito thought he had gotten the guard to let him out when he had spoken about Hajime, but he had failed to factor in one thing. The guard’s love for Makoto effectively stopped him from showing Nagito any mercy, as he believed either that Makoto wouldn’t have shown him mercy, either, or that he needed to avenge the Perspin heir. Love was a powerful influence in decision making, one that Nagito had never had any access to. That was a shame. It would be a useful tool for him in a situation like this, where his fate was entirely at the whims of others, whims that he could only influence to a certain extent.

He scowled, realizing that he had essentially been thinking of seducing that angel guard. That couldn’t happen, his upbringing had caused him to absolutely despise angels. There was no doubt that guard hated demonkind, as well. After all, he had called Nagito rebel scum, and then turned around and said that he was not good enough for Makoto, who was of similar social standing to Nagito. That could only mean that he had thought of demons as far below the angels. However, if this was the only way to get out of the tower he was in, then he needed to at least try.

A small part of him admitted that maybe he just wanted to be loved by someone, as well. If no demon would love him, not even his own family, then maybe an angel would suffice. An angel who was head over heels for someone else, sure, but it wasn’t like he had very many options. And in that moment, he realized that he hated Makoto Naegi, because he had ruined all aspects of Nagito’s life in one way or another. He had shaped Nagito’s appearance, as his mother had essentially turned him into a demon version of Makoto. Her message was clear: he had to be like Makoto, except better. Makoto had gotten him thrown in jail, as he was the one Nagito had needed to assassinate. And now, he was stealing Nagito’s one chance at escaping from the Citadel.

“Am I really that desperate?” he groaned, throwing himself on the bed. He knew the answer though. He was desperate, desperate to get out at least. Wondering whether someone loved him or not wasn’t high on his priority list when he was a political prisoner. He’d do whatever it took to escape, though. If he was exposed to the high amounts of order in the Citadel for too long, he would eventually lose his mind.

Since Drosen forces would probably be unable to enter the city on such a large scale, the only things Nagito could really depend on to get him out of the tower were his wits. Getting up, he went to the door and tested it. It was unlocked. The door lead to a long spiral staircase that presumably led to the entrance to the tower, down in the dungeons. Nagito descended it, numerous large windows allowing the tower guards to see what he was doing and stop him if they felt that he was getting close to escaping. However, the guard angels didn’t even turn around to look at the prisoner they were supposed to be guarding. The tower was so secure that they didn’t even have to bother with that.

Eventually, Nagito came to a door at the foot of the stairs. The windows had stopped showing up a while ago, so he knew that he was far enough down the tower for it to have merged with the main palace building. He didn’t know if it was the door to the dungeons, and though he knew it probably was, he tested it anyway. No matter what he didn’t the door didn’t move an inch.

“Hmm...” Nagito looked around, wondering what he could do in the space he was in. He would have to wait for the guard to open the door, and then get past him, but was there anywhere he could hide? If the guard saw him down near the tower’s exit, he’d probably be prepared to stop an escape attempt. There were heavy drapes hanging above the door, and Nagito wondered if he could get behind those. He flew up to them and slipped behind them, hanging onto the curtain rod. The guard wouldn’t suspect anything if he didn’t look up, but the curtain rod wouldn’t support Nagito’s weight forever, not to mention the fact that the demon heir couldn’t hold on forever. If he was going to hide here, he’d have to do it just before the guard went into the tower.

And that wasn’t the only thing that might go wrong. “Well, why would there be curtains above a door?” Nagito asked himself. There might be traps planted behind the curtain, just in case a prisoner tried to hide up there to get the jump on anyone who opened the door. Since it was what he was currently doing, it was a valid idea. Nagito carefully felt the wall to see if he would set off anything, but nothing happened. It seemed that the Perspins just had really stupid design choices, after all.

Well, that was a relief. He could certainly pull of an escape from the tower, then. He may not have been conditioned for physical combat like his cousin Hajime, but he was an extremely strong flyer. Vividly, he could remember his cousin getting annoyed with him since he could never win a single race against him. They had been on okay, maybe even good, terms, back then. But now they weren’t, and that was really all there was to say on the matter.

Dropping to the floor, Nagito twitched his wings. He couldn’t get in as many wing exercises as he usually did, owing to the close quarters, but he would deal with it later. He still had a good amount of time before the muscles would deteriorate from lack of use. He was reminded of the angel prisoners he had seen before. Their wings hung limp and shrivelled behind them, and a good majority of the angels were half-mad from the chaos energy around them. From what little he had seen of the dungeons, the captive demons were like that, too. It was worrying to think that he could be reduced to that, and even more troublesome to know that many of his people had been.

It would probably drag him down, but he resolved to free the demon prisoners if he could. Maybe the Drosens would love him, then, for looking out for demonkind. But he was thinking too far ahead. He wasn’t even out of captivity yet.

Flapping his wings, Nagito rose into the air and shot up and around the spiral staircase. A few guard angels turned around when they saw a blurred figure out of the corner of their eyes, but couldn’t see anything when they turned around. It was still no big deal. This was the palace’s most secure cell, the captive heir could do anything, but he wouldn’t be able to escape.

When he got back to his room, Nagito tried to return to staring out the windows, but he couldn’t. The sun was going down, and its light was seemingly reflecting off every gold and marble surface in the Imperial District (there were a lot of those) and right into his tower. Drose was gloomy and overcast most of the time, and he wasn’t used to the sunlight. He had been uneasy because of it before, but this was almost unbearable.

He supposed that this was on purpose, to weaken the types of powerful demons the tower was reserved for, but then he noticed the open curtains around the windows. The angels weren’t actively trying to weaken him, their city was just gaudy. Shutting the curtains worked well enough for him. The fabric was in light colors, but thick, and so the inside of the room was almost completely dark. This was no problem, Nagito could see fairly well in the darkness.

He didn’t need to see though, he was going to sleep. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t like he could do anything else in the tower. Actually, he probably could, but it wasn’t anything he wanted to do. The only thing he wanted to do was escape, and he couldn’t execute his plan until he knew what times the guard would come by to do whatever he was supposed to. These were angels he was with, after all — in Drose prison guards came by whenever, but the angels probably had a strict timetable they had to adhere to at all times.

Flopping onto the bed, Nagito tried to think up strategies to subdue the guard. There were many things in the apartments that he could use, but he had to think of the best way to use him. Recalling his brief fight with the angel, Nagito knew that he wouldn’t be able to overpower him by himself. He needed to weaken the guard somehow, and then he would have a higher chance of getting past him.

Whatever escape plan he made would turn out fine, he had always been pretty lucky.

Reassured by that, Nagito fell asleep.

* * *

Meanwhile, Kiyotaka was returning to Makoto’s room. He was in a bad mood from the confrontation with the assassin, and he honestly wanted Nagito to die. It was for Makoto’s sake, the Drosen heir shouldn’t be able to live while the Perspin heir died. Even if Makoto would have been unsure about killing Nagito, Kiyotaka had to get the demon executed. It was for justice, after all. Surely, Makoto would understand.

And even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter anyway. The king would obviously be interested in executing Nagito at some point in time. He was a major enemy of the state. And now that Kiyotaka knew that Nagito’s mother wasn’t exactly concerned about him, executing the demon without fear of a backlash from Drose seemed likely. There were so many reasons to do it, he might as well tell the king.

Approaching the door, he knocked and called announced, “Sir? Are you awake yet?”

There was no answer from Makoto, but the king opened the door to speak to him. “He’s not doing any better or worse from what I can tell. Enough about that, though. Did you get any information out of the heir?”

“Not much,” Kiyotaka replied. “He was more interested in venting about his family problems and telling me information that’s common sense already. The one thing he could say was that the head of the military and her immediate subordinate, who is also her son, are dangerous.”

The king scoffed. “He’s useless. Force some more information out of him, there has to be something he knows.”

“Well, his family seems not to care about him much,” Kiyotaka continued. “If we execute him, Drose won’t rally and fight harder for it. That’s what he made it seem like, anyway. But he could just be deceiving me!” He looked past the king and at Makoto, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter though, he has to be executed for what he did to Makoto! How do you think he should be executed? I will prepare whatever you decide! I can get hangmen, executioners, guillotines, gas chambers, electric chairs...” Kiyotaka continued to list ways of executing Nagito until the king finally cut him off.

“That’s enough, I get the point,” he said. “Are you sure that he won’t be of any more use, though?”

Kiyotaka shook his head. “It’s for Makoto’s sake, he deserves this! And the execution should be a public spectacle, too. We have to send a message to Drose: Order will triumph over chaos!” He would have struck a dramatic pose, but the king would have disapproved of such shenanigans.

“Are you saying that you believed that I’d want to let him live? Eventually, I’ll have him executed, of course. Letting the enemy live would show considerable weakness on my part,” the king replied. “Makoto does deserve justice, but this, to the very end, is politics. Emotion such as yours has no place in it.”

Kiyotaka gulped. Did that mean that the king knew how he felt about Makoto? He wouldn’t approve, there was no way that he would. “The sooner the better, though! It’s a waste of resources to have him imprisoned in the palace, isn’t it?”

“It’s all the same as resources going to the war effort,” the king said dismissively. “It’s impossible for him to be the heir of Drose and not know any information about the country that will be helpful to us. Even if the Drosen royal family doesn’t care for him, he probably spends his time in the center of their country, surrounded by their political secrets.”

“But...for Makoto!” Unfortunately for Kiyotaka, he couldn’t quite formulate a stronger argument for executing Nagito right away.

Even more unfortunate was that Byakuya had a solid argument for why they should wait to do that. “Makoto is not dead yet. He should be the one to choose how his attacker will be executed.”

“True, he would know best...” Kiyotaka said.

“It’s better to wait until Makoto either wakes up and go back to normal, turns, or dies.” Kiyotaka flinched a little at that last one, but the king continued speaking. “If he recovers, he can choose the method of execution, but if he turns or dies, then we will first deal with that and I will choose. In the meantime, you need to continue to interrogate the heir.”

“Right,” Kiyotaka said, looking at Makoto again. “I’ll do just that. You can count on me! Do you still want to be alone with him? I can go if you want.”

“I have already determined that he is not going to wake up soon,” the king replied. “Right now, I’m going to focus on the war effort. Why do you ask, though?”

“Well, I would like to be alone with Makoto for a while, as well!” Kiyotaka replied. “Of course, I totally understand that I am in absolutely no way in any position to ask you to do anything. You can tell me to go back to my post and I’d do it, and I’d even go back and interrogate the attacker more if you’d like!”

Byakuya sighed. “It’s too soon after the first interrogation. The prisoner is likely of the same mindset he was when you left him. Since you said he was unresponsive, interrogating him again will do nothing. Unless you’re trying to wear him down. Nonetheless, I have a military conference I need to go to. If you have to, then by all means, stay with my son.”

Kiyotaka nearly smiled, but if anything would make the king realize that he felt that way for Makoto it would be that. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” he said instead, nodding.

He entered Makoto’s room as the king left, shutting the door behind him. Kiyotaka sat down at Makoto’s bedside and looked down at him. He couldn’t tell what was going on with the chaos energy in his body, but he hoped that Makoto would be able to overcome it and everything would be all right.

“Sir, I’m sorry this had to happen to you...” he said. Nobody heard it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [and then this happened](https://24.media.tumblr.com/8cbd6dcf4f10669e078d21f951c9b98e/tumblr_n142f3rFr81qipgf3o1_1280.png)
> 
>  
> 
> well not really, but it could happen if you wanted it to happen.


	2. Culture Shock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some mildly sexual stuff happens in this chapter, and i don't know if it merits bumping the rating up or anything. let me know if you think it does

Kiyotaka dreamed of dark wings and shadowy forms. He was back in the street with Makoto, and they were beginning their walk. Knowing what to look out for now, he managed to catch the slight movements of the bush before the demon popped out. He could do it now. He’d be able to get Makoto out of the way before he was attacked.

“Sir! Watch out!” he yelled just as the demon rose out of the bush. This time, he was able to throw Makoto completely behind him. The knife went right into his heart, and he didn’t care. This was what he was meant to do — use his life to protect Makoto, no matter the cost.

The pain made his vision blurry, but as he fell back he realized that the attacker was not the Nagito Komaeda he had met in the tower. No, this was much worse.

The attacker was a demon-turned Makoto Naegi, and he looked coldly down at Kiyotaka as he felt the life leave him. 

* * *

Gasping for breath, Kiyotaka woke up. He was exactly in the same place he had been the night before, at Makoto’s bedside. In his current position, slumped over the bed, he was inches away from Makoto’s body and he could feel the heat radiating off of him. This wouldn’t do at all. He wasn’t supposed to be this close to Makoto in any sense of the word.

Even if he really wanted to.

“Sir, I’m sorry!” It was just habit for him to address Makoto, even if said angel was comatose. As he said this, he jerked himself backwards and off the bed, only to lose his balance when the chair tipped backwards. Uselessly, he flailed in an effort to right himself, but all that accomplished was tearing off some of the electrodes attached to Makoto. The machines those were hooked up to started beeping loudly and obnoxiously. As for Kiyotaka, he fell back onto the ground, his head hitting the carpeted floor with an unpleasant crack.

Hearing the monitors go off, the doctor ran into the room. She stopped in her tracks when she saw Kiyotaka on the floor and the disconnected electrodes. “What did you _do_?” she asked, glaring down at the guard.

“I fell over,” Kiyotaka explained. He got up and rubbed the back of his head when the sudden change of position gave him a headache. “I’m going to...go guard Makoto’s apartments now,” he said. “It’s my shift.”

The doctor nodded. “Next time, watch out for these cables. I thought there was an emergency.”

Heading out of the room, Kiyotaka realized he was ridiculously hungry. The previous day, he had been too busy sitting by Makoto to eat dinner. He changed course and went to the kitchen, where there was always a meal laid out for him, and another one that he was supposed to take to Makoto. When he arrived he saw that two dishes had been left for him as usual, even though Makoto wasn’t going to be able to eat for a while. 

This was a waste, something that Kiyotaka wasn’t about to condone. He was about to set the record straight, but then he realized that he was the only one who could access the tower Nagito was imprisoned in. Nobody else would be able to give him food. Starving the prisoner to death had not been part of his orders, and so he decided to go down to the dungeons to bring him food. 

When he went down, many of the prisoners glared at him. They were presumably starving to death, only for a guard to come down and walk by with good food to bring to whoever was in the tower. Some prisoners knew that it was their heir, but they didn’t care about that. Besides, they were all prisoners in the enemy country. His status shouldn’t have meant anything.

Kiyotaka reached the top of the tower only to see something he really didn’t expect to see.

Nagito had his hand down his pants, and he looked extremely annoyed that someone had walked in. He wasn’t shocked or embarrassed at all — he was the heir of Drose and he could do whatever the hell he wanted. Making people leave was certainly included in that.

“I’ll leave!” Kiyotaka exclaimed before the demon could tell him to. Putting the trays of food down on the table — he couldn’t just drop them on the ground like some kind of manifestation of chaos, after all — he exited the room and hastily made his way down the tower. This had completely disrupted everything. Now he wouldn’t be able to do everything on time, unless he was able to get information out of Nagito quickly, somehow. He probably wouldn’t be able to do that, either. Nagito had probably been doing that for shock value, as well. That was how demons operated, shock value was one of their favored tactics. They did the most outrageous things they could to throw off their enemies, and then struck while the angels were weakened. Yes, Kiyotaka had found that to be outrageous. The poor guy had been wholly unable to handle seeing something like that, and now he was going to get the hell out of there.

There had to be something else he could do around the palace, anyway. Someone had to need guarding of some sort, like Makoto’s parents. The king and queen had their own groups of personal guards, but one more person in the guard had to be appreciated. Protecting their lives was of top priority, and surely security had been heightened around them after Makoto had been attacked. It would make sense for the royal guard to be looking for others to help protect the king and queen. That was what he was going to do, Kiyotaka decided. He was going to go join the personal guard of the king and queen as a part-time job until their son woke up again. Dealing with the heir of Drose was in no way working out.

He was interrupted by a sudden loud noise coming from the top of the tower, one that could only be produced by one thing. It startled Kiyotaka so much that he misstepped and fell down the rest of the stairs, landing at the bottom with an impact that actually left him immobilized in shock for a few moments. The fall hadn’t been a large distance since he had been close to the bottom, but knocking his chair over previously had taken quite a bit out of him already. He’d had enough of falling, already. Hopefully he didn’t have a head injury after that.

Standing up was horrible, Kiyotaka thought that the room was tilting all over the place. He went out of the room complaining about how horribly effective shock value tactics were. There was no way Nagito wasn’t doing that to mess with him.

He made it up the stairs, out of the dungeon, and halfway down the hall when the hunger pangs got to him. It wasn’t a debilitating pain, but it was still uncomfortable to walk like that. Food would have to be found somewhere. He had a few choices: go back up the tower and eat his food, or go to the kitchens and make something up about how he had dropped the food or a prisoner had stolen it, getting something else to eat in the process. That last option seemed easier, but it required lying to the kitchen staff, which just didn’t feel right to him. Besides, if he went back to the tower, it would mean that he had been able to overcome Nagito’s shock tactics. If those tactics had really worked on Kiyotaka, then they would become a reliable method to keep him out of the tower. He couldn’t be left at the mercy of a prisoner. That would be completely embarrassing, and then there would be no choice but to kick him out of Makoto’s personal guard, which was the last thing Kiyotaka wanted. Makoto’s safety was the most important thing to him. If he couldn’t oversee it himself, he’d always feel that whoever was doing that was doing it wrong.

And so he went back down into the dungeons, then up all those stairs to the tower. He would have flown, but that would just be a drain on his energy, and also pretty difficult. Those tight turns around the spiralling stairwell were hard to pull off for almost everyone. He had never been a particularly good flyer, not like members of the royal family. 

At the top, Nagito was drying his hands on a towel when he noticed Kiyotaka enter again. “Huh? You’re back already?” he asked, his eyes widening in shock. “You told me you were going to leave.”

“Obviously I wouldn’t leave forever,” Kiyotaka retorted. “Besides, I left my breakfast up here.” 

“Breakfast?” Nagito frowned. “Let me guess, you wouldn’t give me any. You know, I haven’t eaten in a day. I feel like I’m going to die.”

Kiyotaka was about to say something about rich people, but then he remembered that he had returned to the tower to get his food back. “No, I wouldn’t, because I brought food for you already. You should be grateful, this would have been Makoto’s breakfast if he wasn’t...you know.” This wasn’t right. Nagito had stabbed Makoto, and the consequences he faced for his crime were...living in a luxurious tower (even if he couldn’t leave it) and getting to eat food meant for Makoto. This was a major injustice, but Kiyotaka couldn’t really do anything about it. It was just the way things were.

Nagito smiled, picking up on this perfectly. “If he wasn’t currently immobilized, his body fighting hard to expel chaos energy that may kill him, or turn him into a demon that will have to be killed anyway?” he cheerfully finished for Kiyotaka. He seemed so smug about it that the guard would like nothing more than to punch him in the face and shut him up, but it wouldn’t be appreciated. Random acts of violence were nowhere near appreciated in Perspi. They were too chaotic, for one thing. Anything that was random was considered too chaotic. 

Besides, prison beatings were harsh. Once, Kiyotaka had accompanied Makoto to the front lines to welcome angels who had been rescued from Drose’s prisoner of war camps. They had sustained injuries that looked brutal, which had greatly disturbed both the heir and his guard. From then on, Kiyotaka had promised that Perspi would not use such tactics in the royal dungeons on his watch, and he was going to uphold that promise. The only way he could deal with Nagito was to ignore all the inflammatory things he said.

“...yes, if he wasn’t doing that,” Kiyotaka replied. He was rewarded with another look of shock on Nagito’s face as his attempt to break the guard failed. “Anyway, are you going to eat? I’ll wait here until you’re finished so I won’t have to make so many trips up and down this tower.”

“What, you can’t fly up the stairs without getting tired?” Nagito taunted. It was the same way he would have teased Hajime when they were younger. Hajime always got ridiculously angry, which Nagito had found hilarious — until his cousin had decided to retaliate, that is. But now Hajime looked down on him as a lost cause, the way Nagito’s mother had indoctrinated him. It was almost exhilarating to be able to tease someone like that again, even an enemy.

“No,” Kiyotaka replied. If he lied about it, Nagito would probably make an inflammatory remark to try to get him to fly down the stairs. Besides, the Drosen royal family must have consisted of good flyers like the Perspin one. Looking at Nagito’s wings, Kiyotaka could certainly understand that. The demon’s wings were folded behind him, but Kiyotaka figured that when they were opened, Nagito’s wingspan was just as good or maybe even better than Makoto’s. It went without saying that demons didn’t have the same white-feathered wings as angels. Instead, they were black, leathery skin. Because of the lack of feathers, Kiyotaka could faintly see the musculature of the heir’s wings, and inferred that he spent a lot of time flying. Those wings were imposing, and Kiyotaka was in awe and frightened. And slightly aroused.

One of those things did not belong there. Kiyotaka threw the errant thought out, and if it had been a physical object it would have been thrown with such force that one of the reinforced tower windows would shatter. All but one of the curtains were drawn for some reason, though. He supposed demons preferred the darkness, another thing that made them different from angels. All the things he had heard about Drose made it seem like a place where the sun never shone. It would explain why Nagito was so pale.

“...he fell right into someone’s garbage can, and I’m pretty sure that’s why Hajime hates me, even without Mother to tell him how to think,” Nagito finished. Kiyotaka blinked and looked up. Apparently the demon had been talking about something. He wasn’t finished, either. “Seriously. I’m practically the only person in the royal family who isn’t policed by Mother! Auntie’s just her little yes-man outside of the battlefield. You could replace her with a bobblehead, and...” He sighed. “That’s one good thing about not being the favored one.”

“I’m sorry, were you saying something?” Kiyotaka asked. Nagito didn’t take that too well. He slapped the guard with one of his wings, which stung quite a bit. There was no doubt that there had been a lot of power behind that strike. The errant thoughts almost returned, and Kiyotaka grasped at anything else you can think about. “Are you attacking guards now?”

“I’m not going to make a habit out of it, relax,” Nagito assured him. “I just don’t like being ignored. I’m the heir of Drose, everyone should listen to me.”

Kiyotaka huffed. Makoto was nowhere near this egotistical. “I don’t think that applies to angels,” he pointed out.

“Whatever! I’m going to have breakfast now, unless you’ve made me waste so much time talking to you the food’s gone cold. I’m not going to eat cold food.” After sampling some of the food, however, Nagito learned that he wasn’t eating cold food.

“I wouldn’t have brought you anything else to eat anyway,” Kiyotaka replied, sitting as far away from Nagito as he could. That wasn’t saying much, it was a little square table. “You’ve wasted enough of my time already with your talking.”

“Isn’t your job to come up here so I can tell you things, though?” Nagito asked, pointing his fork at the guard angel.

“You are misunderstanding the concept of interrogations,” Kiyotaka observed. “You’re supposed to be telling me about Drose, and giving me information about things Perspi can use to their advantage. I’m sure all these things about your family hating you are entirely irrelevant to the war effort and Drose as a whole!”

Because it was true, Nagito had nothing to say about it. He was irrelevant. Perspi had gotten the wrong political prisoner. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Guess I could always tell you some better things. Family issues are the most upsetting to me, though.”

“They’re not useful, though! If you don’t cooperate, we’re going to have to torture you. I’d rather not have to bring out the instruments of torture,” Kiyotaka said, thinking with disdain about those instruments. “And we’re on a time limit, as well! As soon as Makoto wakes up again, you’ll be executed!”

Nagito’s wings flicked the air idly, a motion that immediately caught the guard’s eye. “Yeah, whatever you say...”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kiyotaka asked. The demon heir’s nonchalance about getting killed was offputting. There had to be some kind of ulterior element to all this. Maybe the assassination attempt was part of a bigger plot, because there was no way Drose would just send its heir off on a high-risk mission like this.

“Your threats are _boring_ ,” Nagito replied, smiling. “Remember, Makoto might die.”

Kiyotaka dropped his fork. “Well, even if he does, which is highly unlikely because he is strong enough to survive...then you’re dying anyway! Then you’d deserve it even more, for actually killing the heir! Even if you were an angel you would die for that crime, because it would be high treason!”

“In Drose, I don’t think killing me would be high treason,” Nagito commented. “There have been a ridiculous amount of assassination attempts, and nobody has really ever gotten arrested for that. Even if they are, they always get ‘mysteriously’ freed from prison hours later. I could tell because I know who was doing it. One of the assassins was —” Here he stabbed his plate with his fork, unwilling to go on. “Whatever. It’s not important anymore.”

“That is...absolutely terrible,” Kiyotaka replied. He knew that if those kinds of things were happening to Makoto, he would have made sure that the perpetrators would never get to leave the dungeon again. “Do you even have guards?”

“Yes, but they’re all not as devoted as you. Mother just pulled them out of random places. My head guard was an air force cadet before Mother made her guard me.” Nagito sighed. “Makoto’s lucky to have guards as devoted as you are.”

“As devoted as me? I’m the only one like this, really! Some of the other ones are...well, see for yourself.” Kiyotaka stood up and went to the windows. Pulling back a curtain, he pointed at one of the guards who was supposed to be a lookout on the roof directly above Makoto’s room.

Nagito looked out the window and at the guard, who was sitting on the roof. He was leaning back, propping himself up with his wings and holding a phone in one hand. The gaudy surfaces of Perspi and the harsh sunlight were reflected back into his face, but he was wearing strange glasses with dark-tinted lenses, effectively keeping the light from bothering him. He had headphones on and was tapping his finger on his phone screen, seemingly in time to whatever he was listening to.

“That guard doesn’t look too attentive,” Nagito observed. “That...reminds me of my own head guard, actually. She’s exactly like that.”

“If your head guard was like Dave, I’m surprised you’ve even survived!” Kiyotaka replied, shocked. How could Nagito live like this?

“Well, has Makoto ever taken combat training?” Nagito asked. When Kiyotaka told him that no, Makoto had not, he continued. “Huh. I guess it’s just like you order-lovers to be okay with being weak just because you’ve always been weak. If he’d have taken basic training, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. But he didn’t. Well I have, because I can’t just put my faith completely in the hands of all these other people.” He neglected to tell Kiyotaka that he hadn’t done too well with the training and had eventually dropped out. “Besides, yeah my guard is unattentive, but she’s very good at stopping assassination attempts. She tries to arrest them, but there’s always someone who bails the assassins out. You know, I think it’s Mother.”

“It seems that everybody wants you dead,” Kiyotaka said. “If you hadn’t done that to Makoto, I would honestly pity you! Even if you are a demon.” A demon that has very nice wings, his brain interjected. He took the thought and threw it out again so that it would hit Dave in the head had it been a physical object. “Well! Are you done with breakfast? I need to leave now, there are other things I have to do around here.” Like sit by Makoto’s bedside, ignoring the fact that people might think he was too close to the heir. Now that he seemed to be vaguely interested in Nagito’s wings, his feelings for Makoto didn’t seem so wrong.

“I’m done, you can get out of my sight now,” Nagito said, leaning back in his chair and using one of his wings to push the empty plate towards Kiyotaka. The guard stared at it blankly, unwilling to take such an order from someone who was in no position to make demands like that. Sure, there was no other way that plate was getting out of the tower, but Nagito hadn’t needed to word it so rudely.

On the other hand, Kiyotaka remembered that Nagito’s objective had been to kill Makoto. If he could help it, he wasn’t going to spend extra time with a person who had tried to do that. While Makoto deserved justice, the fact that Nagito was eventually going to be killed meant that he did not have to be checked on at all, if it was deemed that he was useless as a source of information. That seemed like an attractive plan, as the less Kiyotaka saw of Makoto’s attacker, the better.

Not having to go to the tower would get him to stop thinking of Nagito’s wings, as well. They were the last things he wanted to think about, anyway. And so, Kiyotaka decided to heed the commands and took the plates and utensils. 

“I’m going to go now, but I will return to ask you some questions about Drose!” Kiyotaka said, stepping out of the door.

“Good luck with that, I’m not feeling too inclined to just betray my family like that. They’re still all I’ve got, you know.” Nagito sarcastically raised his wing and saluted the guard. Kiyotaka’s eyes went wide and he quickly turned and slammed the door shut. He hurried down the stairs again, but this time he made sure not to trip and fall. 

“I need to stop,” he said to himself. If he could lose control of himself whenever Nagito so much as did something with his wings that wasn’t folding them behind him, then they were going to have a problem. Besides, Kiyotaka wasn’t supposed to be attracted to demons. He was supposed to hate them, not spend time thinking about their wings. Even the fact that Nagito looked like a the angel heir was beginning to sicken him less, and instead...at this point, Kiyotaka was about ready to send Dave to handle the demon. Since Nagito wasn’t going to cooperate and divulge any information, watching him required minimal effort. Dave could even sit there and play games on his phone all day and everything would be fine. He would, too, Kiyotaka knew Dave well enough.

He needed to remember that while Nagito might have looked nice, he had also done some absolutely reprehensible things to the person Kiyotaka loved. If Makoto knew that his guard had been fawning over his attacker’s wings, it wouldn’t end well. Surely, the angel heir would be fed up with Kiyotaka and fire him. Maybe Kiyotaka would even be charged with treason, as the only acceptable interaction with demons that angels could have was killing them. Perspi and Drose had always been intolerant of the opposite alignment at wartime. Wartime had been the normal state of things for several millennia. 

Finding something else to do was a good idea, something like yelling at Dave for not keeping watch like he was supposed to. Dave was easy to take out frustrations on, he was always doing something wrong and never took being reprimanded to heart. Such frequent verbal tongue-lashings wouldn’t frighten him or cause him to lash out in defense. Flying out at the first balcony he found, Kiyotaka went up to the roof and approached the other guard.

As he did, a tiny supply-carrying craft flew in, landing on the immense roof of the palace, feet away from Dave. The guard angel didn’t even turn or seem to acknowledge the plane, and it was able to fly off without consequence, despite not having clearance to land on the roof. That was obvious, there was no reason for any kind of aircraft to land on the roof. Now that the surprise of seeing an airplane land on the roof with no consequence had faded, Kiyotaka ran over to Dave.

“Excuse me!” he said, tapping Dave on the shoulder.

“Wait, what did you say? Speak up man, my volume’s higher than my bro after a party —” Dave began in an unnecessarily loud voice.

In response, Kiyotaka yanked the headphones off of Dave’s head, forcing the other angel to look up on him. “Please tell me that’s only a colorful metaphor and your brother really isn’t using illegal drugs,” Kiyotaka told him. “It would be a shame to arrest him, he’s one of the best guards we have here!”

Dave frowned. “Are you here to talk about how my bro’s so cool, cause I already get that shit like it’s fresh out of the toilet and I’m at the bottom of the sewers —”

“That’s enough similes, thank you,” Kiyotaka said, cutting him off before he could go overboard with increasingly crude figurative language again. “Did you happen to notice something strange a few seconds ago?”

“Nah, it’s all good in the Imperial District,” Dave replied, turning towards the mentioned area again. “I can’t really see what these guys down there are up to, but this is the Imperial District, I bet my ass it isn’t anything illegal.”

“Er...you can keep your ass, I believe you,” Kiyotaka said. “But there was a supply plane that seemed to have landed on the roof by mistake earlier! We both know that nobody has clearance to land anywhere near the palace grounds, so why didn’t you stop the plane from taking off and arrest the pilot for landing in a restricted area?”

Dave didn’t react at all. He might have blinked, but because of his dark glasses it was impossible to tell for sure. “There was a plane that landed on the roof? God _damn_ , why didn’t anti-aircraft shoot it out of the sky?”

“It was a Perspi supply plane! Obviously our aircraft looks nothing like the things they use in Drose, and the people manning our anti-aircraft guns know the difference! No, the problem was that you weren’t even paying attention! We need to be on high alert now that Makoto is comatose and especially vulnerable to being attacked —” Kiyotaka gasped for breath, trying to calm down before the thought of what could happen to Makoto _really_ sent him into a tirade. “The point is, you should have arrested the pilot for landing in a place where planes aren’t supposed to land.”

“Oh, so it’s an order thing,” Dave said, nodding. He picked up a bottle of apple juice, drank some, and exhaled breathily. “Yeah, I don’t get why you guys bother though, that guy’s on our side. If I arrested him people in the army might get their asses kicked because they needed those supplies, and I would like, get the Fuckup of the Year award, or something. The army general’s gonna come up to me and pin a shitty paper medal all up on me.” Dave took another sip of apple juice. “My job’s fucking lame, anyway. If there’s an actual air raid, all the action will still be with the anti-aircraft guys. Their job’s way cooler than mine,” he concluded.

“You may think that, but your job is more important. You’re closer to Makoto, and therefore more responsible for his wellbeing.” That was also why Kiyotaka was putting Dave under such scrutiny. He cared about Makoto more than anything else in the world, and anyone failing to protect the heir due to neglect or incompetence was just wrong, in his eyes. However, he felt that Dave didn’t necessarily need to be fired unless some major chaotic event happened while he was on the job, proving he was unfit for it. Nothing like that had happened. Somehow.

“Well, is that all you got?” Dave asked before gulping down more apple juice. 

“...Yes, I can’t just waste all my time talking to you. Especially since you don’t seem to care for protecting Makoto at all,” Kiyotaka said curtly, unable to resist adding that last comment.

“I so totally do,” Dave retorted as the head guard walked away. “I mean, it gets me paid...and shit like that.”

Kiyotaka ignored that.

He flew back into the palace and decided he was going to visit Makoto again. His eagerness to do that was a bit creepy, but then again, it was his job. As the heir’s head guard, he would have to be seriously neglectful if he didn’t spend his time actually guarding Makoto, which meant being by him. He didn’t necessarily need to be in the room with the heir, but he wanted to. Besides, it seemed better to be in the room in case someone tried to climb through the vent and attack Makoto. Kiyotaka wasn’t ashamed of being paranoid, he loved Makoto and wouldn’t be able to stand the idea of him dying. It was his fault that Makoto was comatose. If he had done what had happened in his dream, minus the weird demon Makoto, then everything would be just fine. But it wasn’t.

“Nothing much has changed,” the doctor informed him as he entered Makoto’s bedroom. Noticing his downcast expression, she added, “That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means that the chaos energy isn’t making any headway at killing or turning him. We’re trying to augment his immune system so he can expel the chaos energy, so hopefully he’ll be back to normal in no time.”

“O-of course!” Kiyotaka stammered, snapping out of it. “I have to have more faith in the heir, how could I not? He has a strong spirit, there’s no way he won’t live through this!”

The doctor just smiled at him. She knew enough to not just blindly believe that Makoto would pull through for sure, but she would allow others to think that way if they wished. “Well, would you like to be alone with him again? There haven’t been any complications so far.”

Kiyotaka nodded and sat down by Makoto’s bedside again. “Sir, I’m so sorry,” he said once the doctor had left. “I was looking at your attacker’s wings, and I started to think...” He scoffed. “This is ridiculous! Of course I love you more than I like some demon’s wings. Clearly.” 

* * *

Nagito was pretty smart. Learning that his family disliked him had given him some other skills, like the ability to pick up on subtle things other people did. He had felt Kiyotaka’s gaze on his wings, and he realized what that meant. Charming the guard into letting him go didn’t seem so difficult, after all. Unfortunately, it was the one escape plan that would ruin his reputation in Drose if word ever got out. He would be labeled an angel sympathizer, ruining his life forever. Angel sympathizers were doomed to be kicked out of Drose, and Nagito wouldn’t have anywhere to go. Perspi sure wouldn’t take him, because he was still a demon.

But then, he remembered that nobody loved him and maybe an angel would suffice. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, after all. Even so, the fascination the guard paid to his wings was slightly creepy. Nagito wondered if this was how Makoto felt all the time, since he had been around the guard daily. Then again, the guard had cared about the angel heir so much — the fixation with Nagito’s wings was just a passing fancy.

“Well, I can make it more than a passing fancy,” the demon said to himself. Then he realized something. “Wait, why the hell am I talking to myself about this? This is already a terrible idea,” he concluded. Escaping just so he could be caught in limbo, where no country would accept him, was a terrible idea indeed. The guard had walked in on him in a compromising situation earlier, anyway. Maybe he had just been embarrassed. 

As much as he’d like to keep his dignity, though, the fact still stood that this was the best escape plan he had. “Best,” of course, had nothing to do with the plan quality, instead having everything to do with how easily he could pull it off. If his mother could see him now, it would be the last thing she needed to officially disown him and make Hajime her successor. Then again, she might approve of the unorthodox tactics he used to get out. It would be the epitome of chaos. He needed to figure out how to quickly sweep the guard off his feet, but there were more important issues at hand.

“...I need a bath,” he realized. This may not have appeared to be a problem, but as the heir of Drose, he had never taken a bath by himself. Instead, he had servants do it for him. He had never really thought it would be useful to learn how to bathe himself. There were other people who would do it for him and learning how was going to waste time he could spend on doing other things, like flying. 

Obviously, this had never been a problem in Drose, where servants would arrive if he called for them, but now it was a big one. The guard probably wouldn’t come back for a while, and he was the only person who had ever been in the tower. It was likely that nobody else could go in it. If he didn’t return, then Nagito would have to deal with being dirty, which he had never had to do before. He was close to getting in the bathtub and trying to bathe himself anyway, but he decided against it. If he didn’t know how, he could drown himself by accident and that would just be embarrassing.

To pass the time, he did what he did best — think about how badly his family treated him. 

When he was younger, before he had a chance to disappoint his mother, she had thought that he was the best young demon in Drose just because he was her son. It was a fair assumption, but it had turned out to be wrong. 

* * *

“Excuse me!” the queen had said, going over to interrupt her son and nephew, who were flying around in a hall and making a terrible mess. “Hey! What are you doing with that loser?” she asked, extending her arm and drawing her son away from Hajime.

“Huh?” Nagito looked back at his cousin, who was glaring at them. Being called a loser didn’t really sit well with him. “Why’s he a loser?”

“Because he’s my useless sister’s son,” Junko replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “He can’t fly as well as you can, it’s obvious he won’t be able to fight, either! Which is the only thing my sister’s good at. Come on, let’s find you something else to do. You’re going to run this kingdom one day, you should get better stuff.” If only that was true. But when Hajime was the one who showed signs of being a military prodigy just like his mother, Junko had changed her tune. Now Hajime was the one who was fit to rule, and Nagito was relegated to the lost cause. And if that wasn’t enough, now his own mother was trying to get rid of him.

She might not have said it outright, but Nagito knew she wanted to. He was pretty smart, after all. 

* * *

Loud knocking jerked Nagito out of his sulking. “Yeah, what do you want?” he called out, the way he would in Drose. If it was his mother, there’d be hell to pay, but suddenly he remembered he wasn’t even in Drose. At least his mother couldn’t punish him for being disrespectful in Perspi.

“Are you decent?” the guard asked. His voice was muffled coming from the other side of the door.

Nagito had to laugh a little at this. Because of what the guard had run into that morning, he was now hesitant to go in. “Yeah, I am, come in if you want. Which you will, I know what you’re up to. Interrogations, right?” he asked as the guard came in.

The angel stopped in his tracks. “How did you know? Well...I suppose it’s obvious, isn’t it? But that’s right! Again, I don’t want to have to try and torture you for information, so please cooperate!”

“I’ll tell you something if you’d do something for me first,” Nagito replied. There, his mother could go fuck herself, because he had been able to use diplomacy, which was a good trait for someone who would lead a country. Then again, the only other nation Drose was in contact with was its eternal enemy. Diplomacy was nigh-useless on a large scale, but on a small one...

“What do you want? I’m not going to let you free, if that’s what you want, though,” Kiyotaka answered. 

“Give me a bath,” Nagito said.

If Kiyotaka had been holding anything, he would have dropped it. Since he wasn’t, he substituted dropping an object with yelling “WHAT” as loudly as he could, which made the demon heir flinch. “Why would I do that?” he asked, recovering from his shock.

“Because I don’t know how to bathe myself,” Nagito replied. “I had no reason to do that when I could make others do it for me,” he continued when the guard looked at him, incredulous.

“But now you can’t, because I’m not going to do that,” Kiyotaka decided.

“You’d give Makoto a bath if he asked you to, wouldn’t you?” Nagito asked.

“Yes,” Kiyotaka replied, a little too quickly. “But only because I’m his guard! That’s almost like a servant, if you think about it!”

“Of course you’d jump at the chance to rub soap all over Makoto’s naked body,” Nagito said, completely disregarding Kiyotaka’s justifications.

The guard turned red, almost the same color as the vest he wore. “Th-this has nothing to do with whether I’m attracted to the person or not! It’s only because I’m obligated to do things for him —”

“If you don’t give me a bath, it seems like you’d only bathe Makoto because you want to see him naked,” Nagito pointed out. “Besides, I’ll willingly tell you something about this assassination attempt if you’d do this for me.”

“Well...” Kiyotaka began. The prospect of information was good, but it didn’t quite make the situation less awkward. “All the other prisoners rarely get showers. You shouldn’t expect to be treated any better.”

“I checked, and there’s a bathtub in here,” Nagito said. “If I was able to, I could bathe whenever I wanted. And I kind of am being treated better since I don’t have one of those crappy cells, so...”

“Fine!” Kiyotaka yelled, his wings briefly unfolding. “I’ll give you a bath.” Nagito took his coat off, but the guard moved to stop him. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t take your clothes off in front of me!”

“Ugh, none of my servants ever complained as much as you,” Nagito commented. “What do you expect, though? I’m gonna take a bath with my clothes on?” Kiyotaka didn’t say anything. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not going to do that,” Nagito had to add. “I don’t have any other clothes. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure I don’t look that bad naked.”

“Why would you say that?” Kiyotaka asked. “You are making this much worse than it has to be! All I ask is you go take your clothes off somewhere else! Or do that here, and I’ll go fill up the bathtub.” Kiyotaka went into the bathroom and did just that, plugging the drain in the bathtub and beginning to fill it with warm water. He sat by the bathtub, enjoying the warm air that started to fill the room. If he didn’t have to bathe a demon, this would be relaxing.

There was a knock on the bathroom door. “I’m done with...taking my clothes off,” Nagito called out. “Wow this is awkward. When can I come in, I’m feeling a draft out here.”

“Just...ugh, you can come in now, I won’t be looking,” Kiyotaka replied, ducking down and covering his eyes with his hands and wings. He waited until he heard a splash to look up. Nagito was sitting in the bathtub, his wings laid over his crotch. That wasn’t so bad then, Kiyotaka wasn’t going to get a faceful of anything unless he counted wings. “Well, this works out fine,” the angel commented, getting some soap and a washcloth.

“Uh...thanks,” Nagito said as Kiyotaka began to scrub him down. “If you didn’t do this for me, I’d be stinking up the place sooner or later, which would be terrible. You wouldn’t want to deal with that, would you?”

Kiyotaka muttered under his breath about how all nobles except for Makoto were lazy and thought they were entitled to ridiculous things like having others give them baths. He didn’t noticed that Nagito was continuing to talk and his question had been rhetorical.

“...so what’s your name, anyway? Don’t worry, if everything goes the way you Perspins have planned it won’t matter if I know anything about you. Can’t give Mother any information if I’m dead, you know.”

“Huh? Oh, I’m Kiyotaka!” the guard exclaimed, lathering up Nagito’s back. He was careful to mind the wings, as he didn’t know if Nagito would snap at him if he touched them or what. Besides, he didn’t want to touch them for fear of thinking about things he wasn’t supposed to think about demons, again.

“Can you tell me about yourself?” the demon requested. As could be expected, Kiyotaka didn’t say a thing. “Oh come on, if you’re pretty much the last person I’m ever going to talk to, I’d like to at least know something about you.”

“There’s nothing to say,” Kiyotaka replied curtly. “Personality only gets in the way of my job! In order to be a more effective worker, I have to distance myself from those things.” Nagito winced. Perspi really sounded frightening now. Where was the sense of individuality and why did they hate it so much? “Besides, I don’t have much time to do anything besides guard Makoto,” the angel continued. “Well I do now, but...well, here, all I’ve ever wanted to do in life is keep Makoto safe, no matter what.” He sighed. He was sure doing a good job of that, Makoto had gone into a coma because he couldn’t do more.

“Once again, Makoto must be really blessed if he has someone like you to look out for him,” Nagito said. “My guards are...only my head guard does her job, sometimes. If she’s not playing games on her phone. But is that really what you guys think about being individuals?” He inhaled sharply. “Angels are _weird_.” And by weird, he meant distinctly creepy.

“Maybe we are,” Kiyotaka said. “But it’s better than not doing it, like you demons seem to! In fact, I think you’re all very incompetent if you won’t throw aside anything in the face of duty.” In his disgust with demonkind, he became a bit heavy-handed in his scrubbing.

“Hey!” Nagito protested, scooting away from him. “I have sensitive skin, you know!” All he got out of his protest was a strange look from Kiyotaka. “What? It’s true,” the demon huffed, crossing his arms. “I don’t do much — well, any strenuous activity, except for flying.”

“Flying is near-useless in the long run,” Kiyotaka replied in disdain. “You might as well not do anything at all, if that’s all you’ll do!” It was in Perspi, anyway, as regulating the airspace was difficult. Three-dimensional air travel was chaotic by nature, and so angels didn’t make a habit out of it.

“Weird, people say that in Drose, too. And you know why?” A smirk crept over Nagito’s face, assuring Kiyotaka that whatever it was couldn’t be good. “They’re all just jealous they can’t fly like me, usually. Wings like these must not be common anywhere. Speaking of which, do you mind doing them now?” Staying as close to the front of the bathtub as he could, Nagito stretched one of his wings behind him, trying to keep it in the bathtub or at least close.

“I’m sorry, what?” Kiyotaka almost dropped his washcloth when he saw the wing practically shoved in his face. He didn’t need this now. Coupled with how “doing his wings” could be taken, then...Kiyotaka was starting to suspect that this was another shock tactic. Nagito must have noticed him checking out his wings. Of course he hadn’t been able to conceal his behavior well enough, angels like him just weren’t conniving enough for things like that. For once, it wasn’t a good thing. “I’ll do that last!” he finally said, pushing the wing until Nagito wrapped it around himself once more. “Those wings are going to be hard to clean, probably.”

“Just clean them at some point, I’m very fond of my wings,” Nagito said, patting the dark leathery appendages to prove his point. “Without them I’d be good for nothing, anyway.”

Kiyotaka sighed, but said nothing. Arguing with someone he barely knew was a waste of time, but he seriously doubted that someone like the heir of Drose would be useless. Whatever his mother said, his death would probably be a huge blow to Drose anyway. “Here, I’ll wash your hair first,” he offered, grabbing a nearby shampoo bottle and squeezing some of the contents into his hand.

Nagito scooted forward and let Kiyotaka work the shampoo into his hair. “So...do you pay attention to air races?” he asked, grasping at whatever he could think of to say.

“What?” Kiyotaka asked. “No, I have no reason to, but why are you asking?”

“I’m the undisputed champion of air races in Drose,” Nagito answered proudly. “Really, I’ve been in a lot of big events. Some of which were televised, not that you angels would watch any demon shows or anything. Honestly, I’d rather do that instead of be the heir of Drose. Is there anything you’d like to do if you weren’t Makoto’s guard?”

“No!” Kiyotaka said without hesitation. “Protecting Makoto means everything to me, and I wouldn’t give it up for the world! I can’t imagine anything I would enjoy better than — well, this is something I shouldn’t really say, never mind.”

Instead of brushing it off, Nagito leaned forward, as if ready to hear that secret. “You can tell me, I’m marked for death anyway,” he said, trying to reassure the guard.

Kiyotaka sighed again. “I can’t imagine anything I would enjoy better than being in Makoto’s presence.” He noticed that Nagito was about to say something and dumped a jug of water on the demon’s head before that could happen. Nagito glared daggers at him, wet hair hanging in his face. 

“Sorry!” exclaimed Kiyotaka. “I had to rinse your hair out.”

“You could have at least warned me,” Nagito replied flatly. He shoved his bangs out of his eyes and immediately relaxed again. “At least the water here is warm. Drose is always cold, you know. There isn’t much sun there.”

“That sounds terrible,” Kiyotaka said, trying to sympathize with him. “I couldn’t live in a place like that, honestly!”

“I never said it was terrible. In fact, the bright light here is really annoying. Hate the cold, though,” Nagito said. “At least I’ll never have to be in the cold again, unless the executioner is an asshole and decides to freeze me to death or something. And the only reason an executioner would know if I hated the cold is if you said something about it. So don’t be an asshole, or I’ll —” The demon stopped, realizing his threats held no weight in Perspi. “I can’t do anything, so don’t be an asshole because I know you’re not one. Please?”

Once again, Kiyotaka grew cold and distant. “If Makoto wants your execution to be one that would hurt you the most, I’d have no choice but to tell him,” he replied. “He deserves it, after all.”

“So justice is just, being an asshole? Angels are _weird_.” That, it seemed, was Nagito’s final verdict on angels. Then again, considering the circumstances, maybe in that case love was the source of the weirdness, and not angels. Angels were still odd from a demon perspective, though.

“I’m just doing it for Makoto’s sake,” Kiyotaka repeated. If he was doing it for love, it couldn’t be that bad, could it? Besides, Nagito was a demon and any demons in Perspi were supposed to be killed immediately. Nothing said that they had to be killed in ways that were purposefully cruel, though. 

“That’s just wrong though,” Nagito said. That made Kiyotaka freeze. What was the world coming to, when a demon had a better grasp on right and wrong than an angel did? This was a mistake, a momentary lapse in judgement. Passion and indignation at Makoto’s fate had interfered with his reasoning.

“You...you’re right,” the angel admitted. “Here, how about I just...pretend not to know that you don’t like the cold?” He frowned, realizing what that would entail. “I would have to lie to Makoto, though.”

“What, is lying to him high treason, or something?” Nagito asked, rolling his eyes. “Back home, people _had_ to lie to Mother or she’d kill them for not saying what she wanted to hear. And then she’d kill them when she figured out that it wasn’t true. You can never win with Mother. Besides, the cold never hurt me the most, my family did.” That last addendum was nothing more than a quiet whisper. Nagito’s dignity was only salvaged because Kiyotaka hadn’t been listening.

“Sorry, what was that?” he asked. “I wasn’t really listening because I didn’t expect you to say it so quietly.”

“Nothing. It’s not the information I promised to give you, don’t worry,” Nagito reassured him. “Can you do my wings now? You already washed my hair and...everything else. Without getting embarrassed or anything. Do you actually have to give Makoto baths or something?”

“No,” Kiyotaka replied, blushing slightly at the thought. “And...okay, fine, I’ll —” The heir opened one of his wings again, and Kiyotaka froze in shock. “Okay!” he tried again. “Okay, I’ll do it now.” He picked up the washcloth and tried to wash the wing, but froze at the last second. “Okay! I’m going to wash your wings already!” It was more of a command to himself than an explanation to Nagito of what he was doing.

“So you’re hesitating to wash my wings, but you didn’t have problems doing _anything else_?” Nagito asked. Unless his memory had suddenly been screwed up, Kiyotaka had taken a washcloth to the heir’s inner thighs without even blinking. And now, for some reason, he was having problems scrubbing a wing. Something had to be up.

“I’m not hesitating, I’m —” Kiyotaka stopped himself there, because there was no conceivable excuse he could make for his actions. The only thing left was to swallow his apprehension and do it. He worked quickly, scrubbing as fast as he could, for if he tried to take his time and think of what he was doing, it wouldn’t end well, which was obviously a euphemism.

Due to his haste, the wings were clean in record time, and Nagito was left to sit in the bathtub while Kiyotaka drained the dirty water out of the tub, pouring clean water on the demon as he did so. “Baths are horribly inefficient!” Kiyotaka complained. “This place should have a shower installed!”

“I’ve never liked using showers. Reminds me of the rain,” Nagito commented. “If I wanted to take a shower in Drose, I’d just run outside naked.” When he saw Kiyotaka’s horrified expression, he said, “Oh, yeah, that happens a lot in Drose. What do you think? There’s laws against it?” He scoffed at the thought. “The royal family wouldn’t stoop to that level, but we’re not going to stop anyone who wants to. It’s their choice to get pneumonia, we wouldn’t try and interfere with anyone’s fundamental rights.” _Unlike you angels,_ he wanted to add, but his plan of action required being pleasant around Kiyotaka.

“But...that’s a public disturbance!” Kiyotaka exclaimed, dumbfounded. “What about everyone who would be uncomfortable with that?”

“‘Public disturbance’ is the normal state of Drose, honestly,” Nagito replied. “It’s how chaos works, ever since The Great Enlightenment.”

“The great _what_?” Kiyotaka asked. The water level in the tub was low enough for the water to make loud noises as it was sucked down the drain. “I’ve never heard of that.”

“The event that first caused some of the angels to turn into demons,” Nagito said. “You guys probably call it something derogatory like —”

“The Great Corruption!” Kiyotaka said. “That’s what you’re talking about. I guess you Drosens refuse to see how corrupt you really are, and changed the event’s name!”

Wanting to avoid an argument, Nagito changed the subject. “Looks like that’s all the water. Do you mind getting out of here? I know where some towels and things are; I looked around in here some when I first got here.”

Kiyotaka nodded and left, returning to the main room. While Nagito was gone, he took the opportunity to open the curtains in the circular room and let some light in — if the demon heir wanted them closed, he could do that himself later. But for the time being, Kiyotaka was the one occupying the room, and he was letting light in because he wasn’t fond of the darkness.

However, when Nagito walked into the room in a bathrobe, he flinched and shielded himself from the bright rays of sun with his wings. “Why did you have to open the curtains?” he asked. “Do I have to leave a note instructing you to leave everything in the room like I left it?” He was briefly reminded of hotels and laughed a little at that. The Imperial District palace had piss-poor customer service if he was going to die at the end of his stay in the tower.

“No, I’ll remember.” Looking over at the heir, Kiyotaka asked, “What, do you want me to dry your hair, too?” He had already given Nagito a bath. Nothing could be too bad, unless he wanted a wing massage or something. Kiyotaka wouldn’t do that anyway — this was still a prison facility, no matter how luxurious it appeared to be.

The heir of Drose frowned at the question. “I’m not completely useless!” he exclaimed, his wings spreading with an audible snap. “Okay?” he asked, flapping his wings several times to shake out excess water. “I’m not, all right?” Taking a deep breath, he calmed down, took a towel, and began to dry his hair. When he was done he tossed the towel on the ground, earning a shudder from Kiyotaka.

“Don’t just throw things on the ground like that!” Kiyotaka snatched the wet towel and hung it up in the bathroom. “Leaving it on the floor will cause water damage!” he explained, returning to the main room.

“I had people to pick those up for me, too,” Nagito said. “Anyway...information. Actually, I’m going to change first.” He picked up his discarded clothes and went over into the bathroom, shutting the door. A second later it opened slightly and his head popped out. “Is there laundry around here?” he asked. “If I knew I was going to be arrested, I would have brought a change of clothes with me.”

“...no, this facility is not that equipped,” Kiyotaka replied. “I could go get your clothes washed, though. But not now!” he exclaimed when the heap of clothes was thrown back across the doorway. Kiyotaka tossed the clothes back into the bathroom, then said, “I need the information you promised first.”

“Information?” Nagito asked, biting his lip in deep thought. It didn’t take long to remember his promise to tell Kiyotaka something, which had been the only way to get the guard to actually give him a bath. “Oh! I remember now. Hang on, I’m almost done getting dressed.” Getting his wings through the wing slits in the backs of his shirts and jackets was always a problem. They were just barely the right size to fit through the vertical holes, and it took a lot of tugging to get them through. It was annoying and painful, but it was Nagito’s fault for never getting around to having a tailor fix those wing slits, and now there would be no chance for him to. With a massive tug, he was finally able to get his wings into his coat. He heard the miniscule sound of fabric tearing and pretended like he hadn’t. That coat was new — his old one had been shredded when he had flown too close to some fancy buttresses a week prior. When he had returned to the palace with a torn up coat, his mother had chewed him out for ruining his clothes when they were at war, and couldn’t afford to spend much on anything else. She was one to talk, she loved fashion and would have a new outfit made for her every day. Nonetheless, Nagito got another coat made, and he was already ruining it. He was going to be executed, though, he should have been allowed to ruin the coat.

With the wing problem finally solved, Nagito threw open the door and left the bathroom. Kiyotaka was standing in the middle of the room waiting. “So,” Nagito began, sitting down on the bed. “I feel okay with telling you this because this has to do with something failing to happen, by the way, but...this assassination plot was supposed to be bigger. The king, the queen, and the head of the military were also supposed to be targeted, not just Makoto. Actually, Makoto was the least important part of the whole operation, I was really only going to kill him for show.”

Kiyotaka was floored. There was no way there could be any other demons in the Imperial District. Security had been upped, and any demon in the area would certainly be caught. “What — what’s this supposed to mean?” he asked, irritated. No matter the reason or context, he hated it when Makoto was considered unimportant. Besides, that obviously wasn’t the case since he was the only target to be attacked. “So there’s other demons around? I need to tell everyone! Even the very heart of Perspi isn’t safe!”

“No, no, wait! I wasn’t done yet!” Nagito said. “That was _supposed_ to happen, but it didn’t. My guards were going to come with me on the mission, but this morning, when I was woken up — by Mother, mind you — they were nowhere in sight. Mother said they had resigned and gone back to their old jobs, but I had to carry out my part of the mission anyway. So I went to Perspi and was stuck deep in enemy country, with nobody to help me.” He smirked, self-satisfied. “I did pretty well under those circumstances, don’t you think?”

“So you were abandoned by your guard? That’s absolutely terrible! Those guards should have been punished, or forbidden to resign! Especially when they knew that they had a mission to carry out.” Though Kiyotaka was relieved that the full mission had not been carried out, the story of negligent guards hit a little close to home. If any of Makoto’s other guards did that, Kiyotaka would have them promptly executed. However, one part of Nagito’s story struck him as odd. “A member of the royal family and his guards are not the best choices for a stealth assassination mission! Why did your mother make you do this?”

“It was actually Auntie, but I just know Mother put her up to it,” Nagito explained, sighing. “And my head guard’s family actually specializes in assassinations. She was supposed to lead the mission, but...let’s just say, Perspi is very lucky that she was taken off the mission and put in the air force. Well, anyone in the Perspin air force who has to come across her in combat isn’t going to be too lucky, but...well, it’s obvious why Mother put me on this mission. She wants to get rid of me, so she can name Hajime as her successor instead of me. I don’t even get why she bothers pretending to like me! Does she not want to hurt my feelings, or something? Because it isn’t fucking working! Everyone knows she hates me, _everyone_!” At this point, Nagito was so into his tirade that he had leaped to his feet. “So why didn’t she just drop the charade and kill me whenever she wanted? I don’t get it, and honestly I don’t want to understand. Well, she got what she wanted. I’m officially out of the way, yay for Hajime for being the new heir of Drose, or something. Woo-fucking-hoo.” Rant over, Nagito flopped back onto his bed and clapped unenthusiastically for his cousin.

“I...” Kiyotaka hadn’t been paying much attention to what had been said, but the sudden outburst had still startled him. “So you seem to have enemies from within, too. I can’t believe anyone could be that deceptive or cruel, nobody in Perspi that I know of is like that!” The political intrigue in Drose was astounding. He almost began to think that Nagito was safer in Perspi than he was in his own country. “Demons are _weird_ ,” Kiyotaka concluded, echoing what Nagito had said about angels earlier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for fuck's sake ishimaru get your wing fetish under CONTROL
> 
> yeah, dave strider shows up playing flappy bird because i like dave and flappy bird, that's literally why
> 
> the new rich text editor is laggy as hell editing is a pain


	3. And Nobody Understands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it seems that i'm actually updating regularly, like once a month
> 
> nature is beautiful ain't it

It started extremely gradually.

“Go away, Nagito!” The royal family of Drose all lived in the same wing of the palace, with the queen and her son living on the top floor, and the head of military and her son living on the floor below that. The heir of Drose had gone down to the lower floor of the royal living area to visit his cousin, as he often did. However, something was different that day. For some reason or another, Hajime was in no mood to talk to Nagito. While he often gave his more privileged cousin dirty looks, this was a whole new level of dislike, and Nagito didn’t know what he had done to get this kind of reaction from Hajime. Sure, he liked to brag about his flying skills, but it was only fair. Even the queen of Drose would compliment her nephew on his newly realized combat abilities.

“Huh?” Nagito blinked, wondering if he had heard that wrong. Hajime had never been so pointedly rude to him before. Maybe being in combat, or at least training to do so, had grated away at his patience. The young demon wasn’t in any mood to humor any excuses or explanations, though. Like his mother, he demanded total respect from his subjects. Unlike his mother, Nagito had never really been able to achieve that. And he never would. “Excuse me, you can’t just talk to me like that! I’m going to tell Mother, and she’s going to punish you, or something!” Junko’s punishments were nothing to laugh at, enough to make even the most courageous person blanch with fear.

If that was the case, then Hajime had just transcended bravery. He didn’t even blink at the threat, continuing to give his cousin a dirty look despite knowing about his aunt’s punishments. “So you’re just going to run to your mom every time you have a little problem? I don’t even know what to say, that’s...weak.” He began to close the door, and Nagito leaped forward and grabbed the handle with both hands, throwing all his weight onto it to keep it open. He realized with a frown that Hajime was trying to close the door with one hand and not showing any signs of expending effort, while Nagito was giving everything he had and still struggling. 

“Wait!” exclaimed Nagito, giving one final heave against the door. Hajime hadn’t expected this sudden application of force and stumbled back, something that Nagito mentally chalked up as a win. He still had the upper hand against his cousin, but as he would learn later, he wouldn’t keep it for long, and he would never regain it, either. Managing to keep Hajime from closing the door would be his last major victory. “Ugh...what do you even _do_ in combat training?” he asked, stretching his strained back muscles. “That was...you were able to do that with one hand?”

Hajime didn’t speak and just nodded. He was getting annoyed at the heir of Drose and his constant need to show off even though his skills were nigh-useless. Nagito was like a fancy bauble — while some might have thought he was nice to look at, he did absolutely nothing of any worth. Even Junko thought that, and she had said as much to Hajime. An inkling of hope had begun to sprout in Hajime from then on, hope that he would get to be the heir of Drose instead of Nagito. Even the queen seemed to be in favor of him, and in Hajime’s opinion, he deserved it more. Prestige shouldn’t have been an inherited thing, inheritance was too orderly. Rather, it should have gone to someone who deserved it, and since he did more for Drose, Hajime deserved it more.

Nagito had no clue this was going on, but this would be the last real moment he could live in blissful ignorance of his family’s opinion on him. If he could go back in time, he would tell his past self to savor this moment as much as he could, as it would only go downhill from there. Hell, he didn’t even have to stop there. He would have gone back and sabotaged Hajime’s combat training, ensuring that he would continue to be the useless loser. But Nagito couldn’t, and so nothing of the sort happened.

Instead, he said, “Why are you just brushing off the fact that I feel like telling Mother you’re being an asshole to me? I’d do it, too, and then it wouldn’t matter if I kept running to her or whatever because you’d be dead! Or something like that.”

“If you don’t stop bothering me, I’m going to tell your mother,” Hajime replied bluntly.

The blatant hypocrisy in that statement made Nagito laugh. “Okay! So I can’t do that, but you can? What is _wrong_ with you? Besides, even if you go tell Mother, who’s he going to believe? You, or her son?” He gave Hajime the most intimidating glare he could muster, but to his humiliation, Hajime actually smiled with evident amusement at his attempted intimidation. “What? Come on, that’s not funny and you know it!”

“Quit being so sensitive,” Hajime said. “You’re overreacting to what, the fact that I told you to go away? I don’t care if you were your mother, I’d have still told you to go away because I’m busy.”

Nagito frowned. He knew well enough that if it had been Junko knocking on Hajime’s door, he wouldn’t have been so rude. In fact, Hajime would have gone out of his way to accommodate the queen, and if she asked, he would have pushed whatever he was busy with completely out of the way so he could do whatever she wanted.

“Okay, okay,” he said, turning away so Hajime couldn’t see the hurt expression on his face. “If you’re going to be an asshole to me, then I don’t want to talk to you in the first place. I’ll just...go find someone else to talk to.” He doubted that he really did have anyone else to hang out with, and quickly ran through a list of demons he knew in his mind. “Maybe the chancellor’s kids...?”

“Are you trying to overthrow your mother?” Hajime’s voice was suddenly very serious. “You know that our family seized power from the chancellor, and he wants to be the king again. Are you trying to help him or something?”

“Why would I want to do that?” Nagito asked. “I already get to be the king of Drose someday, helping the chancellor out would just be bad for me. He’d probably throw us out on the streets and then cut our heads off, or...or the other way around, I have no idea how these things work.”

“Well don’t talk about him like that,” Hajime warned. “You know your mother just keeps him around so he can think that he has some power around here. If he was completely kicked out of the Municipality, he’d decide it’s a good idea to take power by force and attack us. He’s totally training his kids in some kind of paramilitary organization, too.”

“ _Them?_ Really?” Nagito frowned, thinking of the young demons in question. They didn’t look like people who would be in something like that or even people who would willingly handle weapons. “I don’t see it.”

“You should have at least known that your mother doesn’t like their family,” Hajime said. “Didn’t you learn about — oh, Mom!” He saluted quickly, as he was technically in the military now, under his mother’s command like the rest of the soldiers.

“Are you all ready to go?” asked Mukuro Ikusaba, the queen’s sister. “Oh and...” She turned her head towards the heir, noticing his presence. “You should go back to your chambers.”

“Huh? Why?” Nagito asked. “Am I grounded or something? I would think that I’m too old to be sent to my room, but I guess not...”

“Your mother requests it,” Mukuro replied. “You are not to bother us.”

Nagito’s wings drooped. Even he wouldn’t be exempt from his mother’s rage if her orders were not followed. “Okay, fine...” He left the two demons and climbed up the stairs to the upper part of the residential wing, and then went into his chambers. This was odd, his aunt and cousin must have had some kind of top secret military thing to attend. Nagito had no interest in those kinds of things — he found military dealings too gritty for his tastes. In that way, he and his mother were similar. They preferred not to do any physical work, instead having other people do it for them. Working with others — or at least manipulating them into doing their bidding — was more in their domain. If that was the case, then his mother must have hated him because she couldn’t stand having another person just like her around. There could only be one, and it was going to be her.

Sighing, Nagito sat down on the couch and turned on the television. He wasn’t interested in watching, but he wanted some source of background noise. A completely silent room would just be mildly unsettling. Even flying was something he wasn’t up for doing. The ceilings of his room were certainly high enough for him to fly around some, but he didn’t even want to do that. Lethargy had crept over him, and he listlessly curled up on his side, observing the Municipality of Drose as seen outside his window. True to Drosen style, the city was a disorderly sprawl of buildings of different styles and purposes set up wherever the builder felt like putting a building. There were no such things as regulations in Drose. The streets were a tangled snarl, impossibly confusing to navigate. However, one living in the Municipality long enough was sure to remember at least one path to somewhere. It was infinitely easier to navigate the city by flying, though. Crashes were inevitable, but they never stopped anyone.

Nagito was not surprised to see that it was an overcast day. Clear skies in Drose and especially the Municipality were odd, even seen as a bad omen by some. While he didn’t believe in that kind of thing, the gloomy sky and gray clouds provided Nagito with some kind of comfort. He had grown up with these conditions, and while Hajime may have started to hate him, the sky over the Municipality would always be the same. The one downside to the weather was that it was cold, but he was inside, protected from the elements by the walls of the palace. He’d be fine. 

The quiet, peaceful atmosphere and low drone of the television put the heir of Drose to sleep, and he dozed for a few hours or so. His dreams were nothing vivid, but more importantly they weren’t anything upsetting. When he woke up, though, he was unsettled to see a beam of sun illuminating a spot in front of his couch. He looked out the window and spotted a gap in the clouds that was just enough for the sun to show up and shine through his window. He frowned, unused to such bright light in Drose. Nobody ever really got used to sunshine in Drose. The sun was supposed to be locked away behind a perpetual layer of clouds, not out and shining on demons and their cities.

Nagito’s eyes were drawn from the patch of light on the floor to a spot farther forward — the television screen. Whatever was on was showing some footage of his mother on a battlefield, of all things, when he knew perfectly well that she hated combat. Belatedly he remembered that his mother visited the front lines once a year to encourage the Drosen troops. Seeing their queen go all the way out from the capital to visit did have a positive effect on many soldiers. It also reminded them that if they did a thing besides fight valiantly and die, then they would have to answer to this terrifying person.

Hajime was apparently there, too, looking with some interest at what the soldiers were doing. “That’s odd,” Nagito said, “usually I’m the one who goes with Mother to the front lines.” The visit was one that the queen and heir of Drose would go on, so seeing Hajime there instead of him didn’t make sense. He was still a little out of it from his pleasant nap and hadn’t put the pieces together yet. Later he’d look back on the moment and think of it as bittersweet. It was really the last time he would ever be content with his family.

If the heir of Drose went on the annual trip to the front lines, and Hajime had went on that trip, then Hajime must have been the heir of Drose, now.

“Mother replaced me! She just fucking replaced me!” Nagito leaped off the couch, and in his anger he was able to get far up in the air without flapping his wings. He was about to smash the television screen in, but decided against it because that thing had been expensive. It was also just the poor messenger, he had no right to shoot it or rather, smash its screen in. The most decisive thing against doing it was that he was probably too weak to be able to smash the television. If anything, he’d probably just cut himself on the broken glass. 

There were other things he could destroy, though. He turned around and tore down every single thing he could find on the walls. Quite a few of them were valuable, but the worth of objects had no bearing on Nagito. Everything he could get his hands on was indiscriminately torn apart. While he destroyed whatever he could in his room, he screamed out curses at every other member of the royal family. He hated Hajime for replacing him, his mother for deciding he was bad enough to be replaced, and Mukuro for enabling her sister to take her son and make him into the heir of Drose. They were all against him, and certainly all hated him. He didn’t care if his words could be interpreted as treasonous. He was up there with his mother, if not slightly below her — but still more important than Hajime — and that meant he could do whatever he wanted, using fear to make sure that nobody would be able to stand up to him for it.

The room was in shambles, and an exhausted Nagito fell onto his side in the middle of it. Now that his energy and adrenaline ran out, he was no longer able to even stand. At least nobody would care too much about this, only order-lovers would be disappointed in him for making a huge mess out of his room. He opened his mouth to yawn...and began sobbing, instead. Nagito rolled onto his stomach and began to weep bitterly, muttering raspy curses under his breath. He was far too young to realize that everyone else in his family disliked him. Even if they did dislike him, he would rather not know. 

Sometime, when he was crying on the floor, Nagito fell asleep again. He woke up to see the queen’s maid sorting out his room and throwing everything he had destroyed in the trash.

“A-are they still gone?” he asked, sitting up and covering himself with his wings. He was sure that his face looked like a mess from all the crying he had been doing, and that he would have to wash it. “My...family, I mean. Are they back from the front lines?”

“They’ve been here for a while,” the maid responded, continuing to tidy up. “You...you’re lucky your mother didn’t hear those things you were saying about her. She’d kill you if she had.” Nagito took one look at the maid’s smirk and realized that the queen would know, soon. Her maid was fond of gossiping as it was, and she probably thought seeing the queen’s son executed for speaking against her would be funny.

There was nothing Nagito could do but assert himself in an attempt to call the maid off. He leaped to his feet and proclaimed, “If you do that, I’ll have you executed!” The heir of Drose glared at her, his gray eyes resembling cold iron. She did not falter under his gaze, as his threatening air was set off by his young age and the fact that he had never done such a thing before. “I’ll do it!” he exclaimed, noticing that she wasn’t sufficiently threatened. 

The maid just walked away, and Nagito sighed. He wished he had the same effect on people as his mother, but it would take a while to work up to that. 

Speaking of his mother, the door to his room walked in and of course, the only person who could go in like that without asking was her. He looked up and immediately recoiled — she didn’t look too outwardly angry, but he could recognize the cold look she had. It spelled major trouble for him.

“Oh! M-Mother!” he exclaimed, trying to mask his shock. “What are you...what do you want? I heard that you went to the front lines, and took Hajime with you.” He refrained from pointing out that he was supposed to go, because that would only make his mother angry. “How did that go?”

“It went very well,” Junko replied, smirking. “It was the best annual trip I’ve ever been on, I’d say. But how were _you_ doing today at home? I heard from my maid that you were running around screaming treasonous things, and it was confirmed by other workers who were around here. What was that all about?”

Nagito couldn’t hide his flinch. Of course the maid had told her, it would have been funny to see the Heir of Drose taken down a notch. It was funny because he got whatever he wanted and never did anything important, besides flying around like an idiot. This would prove that he wasn’t as great as he thought he was, and it would fix the problem of him thinking he was great, in the first place. It would fix it so well that the problem would probably never resurface again.

“Uh, Mother, I can explain...” he began weakly, but Junko wasn’t having it.

“I do _all these things_ for you, even though you’re useless in combat, and this is how you repay me? By throwing a tantrum and saying treasonous things about me just because you didn’t get to go somewhere?” She didn’t frown at her son and just smirked, which was even worse. “Next time, I’d try not to be such a little ingrate. Assuming, of course, that there is a next time. We have anti-treason laws for a reason, you know. Wouldn’t want to run the risk of you being an order-lover. Imagine that, my own son being an order-lover! Didn’t see that one.”

Despite the fact that the topic of his execution was now out in the air, or maybe because of it, Nagito gathered his courage and retorted, “If we’re talking about rules, then I don’t think I’m the order-lover here.”

Junko contemplated that for a moment, then reached out and grabbed her son’s chin, tilting his face up and making him look at her. The young demon didn’t move, as his mother’s long red nails could completely mess up his face if she felt like doing that. “Hmm...you _are_ my son, though. Maybe I should give you the benefit of the doubt. Just don’t ever do that to me again. Got that?”

Gulping, Nagito managed to nod at the queen, and she let go of his face, leaving nail marks in the skin, and patted his head patronizingly. Grasping for one last shred of courage, he suddenly exclaimed, “That maid of yours, I’ll have her executed for ratting me out! I mean — it could be seen as treason, maybe she wanted me out of the way or something! You’d understand, wouldn’t you? It isn’t like you weren’t going to kill me for saying treasonous things a second ago...” 

Junko didn’t answer right away, totally unimpressed by her son’s attempt to justify his actions. “Go ahead, I’m not really in the mood to deal with whatever you're doing right now.” With that, she turned and left the room, leaving Nagito to his own devices. He had to act fast, the indignation he felt at seeing Hajime in his place was slowly waning. At that point, it hadn’t become the standard yet. Quickly, he called up some guards, and explained what they were supposed to do. They arrested the offending maid, dragged her to the front of the palace, and shot her on the spot. Nagito stood by, coldly looking down at the crumpled body left on the steps. If he was going to survive in the face of the shift of power his mother had created, he would have to be as cruel as her. 

Perhaps it ran in the family, after all. 

* * *

 

All of a sudden, Nagito woke up. He didn’t remember going to sleep, and so he must have passed out some time before that guard had left. The last thing he remembered was Kiyotaka calling demons weird, which was a totally hypocritical statement. From what he had seen, that angel in particular was a ridiculous hypocrite. Obsession with order was the strangest thing, in his eyes. Who would want everything to be totally predictable? If life was like that, everything was pre-programmed, as if angels weren’t really living, instead doing things because they were “supposed” to. 

He didn’t have time to dwell on the philosophical beliefs of angels and compare them to those of demons, though. Currently, the issue bothering him was the fact that he had dreamed of one of the worst moments of his life. His brain just hated him like that, for some reason. It was that moment when he realized that nobody even liked him. Even his position didn’t stop people from treating him badly. He did live in Drose, though, and the only position that really garnered much respect there was that of the reigning monarch, and while that was true, it was mostly because of his mother’s intimidation techniques. Other people weren’t so lucky, and therefore there were only two people who were nice to Nagito, and they were both head guards.

Because of what her job entailed, his own head guard didn’t really count. She was practically obligated to be nice to him, or she wouldn’t get paid. However, nothing that Nagito could think up explained why Makoto’s head guard was nice to him, and he was, despite the hate he claimed to have for the demon. If Kiyotaka had hated Nagito, he wouldn’t have brought him food and given him a bath, instead allowing the heir to deal with starvation and filth. Such treatment made no sense to Nagito at all. He had stabbed the very person the guard loved, and somehow this wasn’t enough for him to be treated badly. At the very least, he expected to be put in the dungeons like everyone else. Then again, Drose didn’t have any special prisons for so-called important people. If anyone got imprisoned, they would be thrown in a cell under the palace no matter their social status.

Maybe the guard was just doing his job, but this meant that he really didn’t hate Nagito. Real hate meant that the guard would even defy instructions to make sure that Nagito suffered in some way. He wouldn’t have been able to just do his job in that case. And again, that wasn’t happening. 

Maybe, just maybe, Nagito wasn’t even important enough to be hated by anyone because of something he did. Nothing he did made a large enough impact. Instead, he was hated just because he existed, which was way more pathetic than doing something to earn someone’s hate. 

“I was right, angels _are_ weird,” Nagito sighed, staring out the window. Compared to looking out at the Municipality, watching stuff go on at the Citadel was ridiculously boring. The streets outside were so still that he almost thought that the windows had been painted on, but then something would move, proving that things were alive down there. Barely alive, by his standards. Not only were angels weird, but they were ridiculously _boring_. Nagito couldn’t understand how anybody could live this way. No wonder Perspi had to be destroyed, there was something unnatural about the country. If there was one thing Nagito wanted to figure out, it was why Kiyotaka was treating him fairly well. He didn’t feel like a prisoner at all, except for the fact that he couldn’t go outside.

Before he could start thinking about it, the door opened and the very angel he had been thinking about walked in, carrying another tray.

“Is it lunch already?” he asked, looking at the food Kiyotaka was carrying.

There must have been a hint of sadness in his voice, because instead of replying, the guard asked, “Is there something wrong?”

“Of course there is,” Nagito replied, and that was that. Everything was wrong because he was thinking of the past and his family again. “You’d never believe it, but there’s too much that’s wrong with my life.” Living with his family in Drose was like living in a gilded cage with dangerous predators that really wanted to eat him. At any time, some accident could have happened, conveniently getting him out of the way and setting up Hajime as the only one that could rule Drose. It had happened, everyone who was supposed to go with him had _accidentally_ been dismissed from their jobs the night before the mission was supposed to be carried out, leaving him alone and a prime target for being captured. It could have been worse, though, he could have been in prison in Drose. He winced. Whatever went on there was _not_ something he wanted to partake in.

Meanwhile, Kiyotaka was thinking about how Makoto lived, because the other heir probably lived in a similar manner. Makoto could ask for anything and get it immediately, and there was no reason that wouldn’t be true for the heir of Drose, as well. “Wait, what could be wrong with your life? You get everything you could ever want, don’t you?” he pointed out, not without a hint of spite. Kiyotaka wasn’t like everyone else in the Imperial District, that was for sure.

“Yeah, everything I want. Except one thing,” Nagito said. Seeing Kiyotaka about to ask another question, he quickly added, “And _no_ , I don’t want to tell you what that is. It isn’t important to the war effort, anyway, so forget about it.” It was true, the fact that he wanted attention but never got it was in no way important to the war effort. To be honest, he really did believe he was entitled to at least a little bit of attention. It was partly because of his status, and partly because he hated seeing how everyone would do whatever he asked quickly so they could get away from him as soon as possible. And they would pretend to act like it was their pleasure to carry out a request from the heir that nobody really liked, which pissed him off. That was the bare minimum of politeness. If nobody liked him, then nobody should have pretended to like him, because that meant that they were assuming he was stupid or something.

“Okay,” Kiyotaka said. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s your business. I have no right to impose anything on royalty, after all. I brought some lunch, though.” With that, he put the trays down on the table.

Lethargically, Nagito sat up and made his way over there. He didn’t want to eat, he wanted to mope over his family and how people treated him. At the rate things were going, only a record two people would ever be nice to him. “I wonder, is Drose going to make me some kind of martyr after I die?” he thought out loud. That was stupid, though. “I hope not, everyone doing that probably doesn’t care, and just doesn’t want to speak badly about someone who’s dead. Unless the first thing Mother does when she hears that I died is to badmouth me. Then nobody will care and can talk shit about me all they want.”

All of that flew completely over Kiyotaka’s head. “Uh...what are you talking about?” he asked uneasily. “How about...how about you have some lunch?” He wondered if food would stop the demon’s ramblings. 

“I don’t feel like eating, but...I’m not going to get anything else to eat for lunch besides this, am I?” Nagito asked. It was a rhetorical question though, he already knew that he wasn’t going to get anything else to eat for lunch besides the food Kiyotaka had brought him. He was just trying to tell himself that if he didn’t eat then, he would have to wait until nightfall to get another thing to eat, and maybe not even then. The night before, he hadn’t gotten any food. As order would have it, he probably wouldn’t get anything for dinner again, as not getting it was already a set precedent. Then again it had only been a day, which was perhaps too short of a time for habits to form, even for angels.

The most he did was pick at his food, and for once he wasn’t his normal talkative self and the lunch period was spent in total silence. Even Kiyotaka thought something was wrong, but he didn’t say anything. It wasn’t his job to talk to Nagito, anyway.

After picking at his food for a while, Nagito put his fork down and suddenly asked, “Why do you treat me so kindly?”

“Kindly?” Kiyotaka repeated. “Well, I think you deserve at least a trace of respect, just like everyone else! Even if you _did_ attempt to kill Makoto...”

“A trace is better than all the fake respect people in Drose give me,” Nagito commented. He sighed. “In those cases, I think everyone should just be honest! I know people say things about me behind my back, anyway. I’ve heard some things before.”

“I’m...I’m sorry,” Kiyotaka said. “If you think about it, that will never happen to you again, or at least you won’t hear people say things about you!” Since this was because Nagito was going to be killed, it didn’t go over well.

“Right,” he said flatly. “Because I’m going to be —” He was cut off by the sound of a ringtone.

“Oh!” Kiyotaka exclaimed, taking a phone out of his back pocket. “I’m sorry, could you excuse me for a second?” He answered the call and was immediately met with Dave yelling through the speakers.

“Dude? Are you there? Come on, man, pick up, I am literally going to shit my fucking pants if we don’t do something!” Dave’s voice came out as a frantic babble, and it took Kiyotaka several moments to pick apart the message and figure out what was going on. As far as he could tell, Dave was in a state of extreme panic. Kiyotaka’s thoughts tended to run on only one track, so he instantly jumped to the worst conclusion, or at least the worst in his mind.

“Dave? What happened? Is...Did something happen to Makoto?” he asked.

“No, it’s way worse,” Dave said. Kiyotaka didn’t quite understand what could be way worse. “I guess that interrotower must block sounds or shit like that, because the air raid siren’s been going off.”

“Air raid? Now?” Kiyotaka looked out the windows but spotted nothing. If there _were_ Drosen planes (and he had little reason to believe a false alarm would have happened in the Citadel) then they just weren’t there yet.

“Yeah, so if you could tell me what to do that’d be much appreciated, cause I’m flipping my shit on this roof up here, I’m a sitting duck and —” There was a rustling noise, presumably Dave standing up. “I have no clue about the procedures for this kind of thing, holy shit.”

“Get indoors, for one,” Kiyotaka instructed him. 

“Get indoors? You really have to tell someone to _get indoors_ during an air raid?” Nagito exclaimed. “Angels are completely _ridiculous_! I don’t know how you’ve managed to survive all these years if you totally lack common sense!”

Ignoring that, Kiyotaka asked, “Dave, have you made it to safety yet?”

“Okay, I’m inside,” Dave said. “Procedure says to stay put, I think. Hell, I don’t know why we have to go through dozens of shitty procedures when everyone knows the Imperial District is like, nigh-fucking untouchable. It’s a lot less shit-inducing to have a roof over my head while shit’s exploding, but god damn, I don’t want to have to deal with all this.”

Kiyotaka sighed. “Dave, those procedures are here for a reason. If you break them you’d run the risk of getting killed in the raid...if a few planes did manage to get past the District’s defenses. Which I doubt! Anyway, unfortunately I will have to disregard the procedure to stay put and go guard Makoto! His vulnerability’s making me worry, even if he won’t really be worse off than normal during an air raid.”

“Hey, I’m right by the heir’s room, he’ll be totally fine with me around,” Dave said.

“Is that a joke?” Kiyotaka asked. “You’re spouting complete nonsense! It’s _my_ job to protect him, so I should really make sure that nothing bad happens.” He stopped, realizing that he had no way of deflecting a bomb if one did make its way to the palace. “Or...at least I’ll die by his side, if we do get bombed for some reason.” 

In the background, Nagito could be heard sighing loudly. He wasn’t jealous because that would be completely ridiculous. Kiyotaka’s strong devotion to Makoto was just getting in the way of his escape plans, and that was all.

Kiyotaka made his way to the door, but before he could leave the tower a faint explosion could be heard. He froze. While logically nothing would be able to hit the palace, going somewhere while bombs were falling from overhead was a really bad idea. By some freak accident, a Drosen plane could be able to hit the palace. Besides, all the security measures installed to keep prisoners from escaping meant that the tower was the safest place in all of Perspi. It would take a major lapse in judgement for him to leave. Even he realized that going to protect Makoto might not be worth it, especially since there was nothing he would be able to do in the event that they actually did get bombed.

“Shit, the raid’s starting now, you still coming over?” Dave asked.

“No, I think I really should just stay in the tower during this,” Kiyotaka said. “I’m worried about Makoto, but it wouldn’t be a good idea to make myself more vulnerable for no reason!”

“Oh, calm your nuts about that, I got this guarding Makoto schtick,” Dave reassured him. “I got it more than if it was right in my hand and I had a fucking death grip. Nothing’s gonna get past the Dave Strider Eye of Vigilance, so don’t try any shit.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Naturally, Kiyotaka hadn’t understood Dave’s rambling rhetoric and weird comparative language. Come to think of it, barely anyone did. Dave was eloquent in his own weird way — a way that nobody understood. “Thank you for guarding Makoto for me in this situation, though!”

“Yeah, I got this,” Dave repeated. “Got it more than — screw it, I already said something like that.” Kiyotaka put his phone down momentarily so Dave couldn’t hear his sigh of relief. “Anyway, it’s not like I think you need to shut the fuck up or anything but I got things to do, you know?” he heard Dave continue. “I’m out.” With that, the call abruptly cut off.

“I sincerely hope Dave knows what he’s doing,” Kiyotaka said to nobody in particular. “An air raid, though! Maybe Drose wants you back, after all.” This was of course addressed to Nagito.

The demon in question scoffed. “Drose would _never_ want me back. Or at least Mother wouldn’t, and that’s pretty much the same thing. If anyone tried to get me back, not that anyone would, she’d stop them herself. So there has to be another reason there’s an air raid...probably another attempt to cause chaos in Perspi.”

“Your failed attempt at killing Makoto’s caused enough chaos!” Kiyotaka said. “But it will take way more than this to completely throw the country into chaos, you know.”

“I know, you guys are practically made of order. But...wait, I think there _is_ a reason this air strike is happening, actually,” Nagito said. 

“So there was actually a _reason_ for a Drosen attack? I thought that was impossible!” Kiyotaka scoffed, shaking his head. “Will you tell me, or is this classified information? Just so you know, I don’t think knowing why the attack happened would help stop it, it’s already happening!”

“Yes, it’s...dammit, what happened?” Nagito idly fanned himself with his wings as he struggled to remember what had happened. “It was..oh! I think I remember everything. Okay, so there was this Perspin plane that was just flying over the Municipality this one time. It was shot down, of course, and it crashed right into the top of someone’s hotel. The owner of the hotel didn’t even care that something had smashed into his building, he just refurbished the inside of the plane and made it into a suite. I don’t know how good of a room that would be since there’s no shower, but...”

“Wait, so the owner just left a crashed plane in his building, and allowed other demons to stay in it? That is ridiculously dangerous, it could fall at any time!” Kiyotaka exclaimed. The more he heard about demons, the stranger they seemed. “I don’t know how you demons have survived for so long if blatantly dangerous things like that are... _encouraged_ to happen!”

“Where the hell did you come up with that one? It’s not encouraged, it’s just allowed to happen, because in Drose, we wouldn’t interfere with anyone’s freedom. Unless it’s the freedom to say anything negative about my mother, anyway,” Nagito corrected. He knew that Kiyotaka was getting his incorrect information about demons from the public opinion in Perspi, but it was still offensive. “But you’re right about that plane falling. It’s wasn’t as unstable as you think, though. Anyway, a few days ago there were a couple of demons who got in a fight in that room. They must have been drunk or something, it’s pretty obvious that fighting in a room like that would be dangerous.”

“Nobody thought to break up the fight?” Kiyotaka was incredulous. “In my opinion, it needs massive reforms!”

“In _my_ opinion, Drose is fine just the way it is.” Nagito shrugged his wings. “Those demons were free to fight, if they were injured or died then that’s their problem. They did die, actually, because the plane got dislodged and fell. The fight must have been pretty intense for that to happen, then.”

Kiyotaka winced. “And that’s it? Those demons just died?”

“That’s not it, some other stuff got caught up in the crash,” Nagito replied. “Those demons died on impact, but the plane also landed on a statue of my parents overthrowing the previous king of Drose. Let me tell you, my mother was _pissed_ beyond belief that something commemorating a triumph of hers like that was destroyed. She wanted to take out her anger on someone and have them killed, but everyone responsible was dead. The two who were fighting died like I said, and even the hotel owner was dead. He was standing by the statue when the plane fell on it, so he was crushed too.”

“That...seems awfully convenient,” Kiyotaka commented. 

“Well, Mother didn’t think it was too convenient,” Nagito continued. “There was nobody for her to really take out her anger on. Not immediately, anyway. It was a plane from Perspi, though, so she thought taking it out on you guys was fitting, what with the war and all. So she arranged an air strike against the capital. It took a couple of days to arrange it, but...here it is.” In the distance, faint explosions could be heard. The raid, of course, hadn’t stopped after that initial bomb.

“So, people in the Citadel are going to be killed or injured just because some demons got drunk and dropped a plane on a statue? There are so many things wrong with you demons that I don’t even know where to start!” Kiyotaka groaned and cradled his head in his wings. He didn’t understand how demons could be so callous. This was why rules were in place, so people wouldn’t get hurt or killed, and now, he knew events could snowball into the massive disaster that was currently going on.

Nagito shook his head. “It’s not demonkind as a whole that caused this bombing, it’s just Mother being petty,” he corrected. “And let me tell you, she is way too petty. Did I ever talk about how she kills people for really small reasons? Because that’s a thing she does.”

“Well I can certainly get that from the fact that she issued an air strike just because a statue of her was destroyed,” Kiyotaka retorted. “Nobody in the Perspin royal family would ever dare do that!”

Hearing the angel guard wax on and on about the Perspin royal family was nothing new to Nagito anymore. “Let me guess, Makoto especially wouldn’t do that?” he asked flatly. “Okay, yeah, I can understand that. It takes a lot to get on Mother’s level of pettiness. I think anybody who comes back with bombs still loaded on their planes will get executed, too.”

“That explains why the bombers seem to be more aggressive than usual...” Kiyotaka commented. 

The explosions, which had been faint before, suddenly increased in volume. Previously they had been subtle background noise in the conversation, but now they were loud enough to be disruptive. Nagito actually screamed and flapped over to his bed, where he tried to burrow a hole in the mattress. “Why are they getting _louder_?” he wailed. “We’re going to die!”

“No we’re not! The planes are just getting closer, because...” The planes were _not_ getting closer because anti-aircraft couldn’t do its job, and Kiyotaka refused to believe that. The security around the Imperial District was almost impenetrable, give or take a few demons that managed to sneak in. “The planes are getting closer because anti-aircraft needs closer targets! Perhaps the guards up there are wasting too much ammunition firing at the bombers!”

“I feel like I’m going to get blown up any second now! All because Mother didn’t have anyone to kill over her stupid fucking statue!” At this point, the heir of Drose began sobbing, too afraid for his life to try and preserve any dignity he had left. Since he had made Kiyotaka give him a bath, there wasn’t much dignity left to preserve, anyway.

“That isn’t going to happen! Honestly, how bad do you think the district’s security is? This place is heavily defended!” Kiyotaka told him, trying to set the record straight and defend the city’s security. “This tower is practically the safest place in the entire country, you know! If anything blows us up, then...everyone in the anti-aircraft unit must be dead, or something! And that is not going to happen!” he quickly added. 

Nagito wiped his face on one wing and sat up. “You can say that, but back home, bombings could hit the palace, or come really close to hitting it. There’s no special defenses or fancy district in the Municipality, you know? Actually there was a brothel right next to the palace that got blown up. Does that tell you anything?”

“That there’s a lot wrong with Drose, yes,” Kiyotaka replied. “Anyway, I heard that the Drosen palace had been bombed successfully before, but I thought it was just the pilots telling stories to make themselves look better!”

“Yeah, no. Bombers really did hit the palace. The bombings were s-so _loud_...” With that, Nagito retreated behind his wings.

“But that won’t happen here!” Kiyotaka insisted. His reassurances did nothing. Nagito still kept his wings wrapped around himself, sometimes flinching at an explosion. The guard sighed. There was nothing he could really do to calm him down. Well, there was one more thing, but it was very awkward. He didn’t exactly have many options available, though. 

Sighing, he sat down next to the demon, tentatively extended one wing, and wrapped it around Nagito before he could think twice about it. Nagito looked up in confusion. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing’s going to kill you, I promise,” Kiyotaka told him. “I’ll make sure of that, because if I don’t, Makoto won’t get his revenge on you!”

“Right...” Nagito replied. “But you know...I actually feel better.” To be honest, this was the closest he had been to anyone in his life. People preferred to deal with him at a distance, as if he could kill someone with a touch. His mother was above hugging him, and fighting with Hajime didn’t count. The first thing Nagito thought about it was that Kiyotaka was very warm. Feathers must have added warmth to angels’ wings, as his own wings were always slightly cold. To be honest, he would stay there forever if he could. It helped stave off his fear of getting blown up in the ongoing bombing, for one thing.

The warmth actually started to make him drowsy, even though he had already taken a nap right before lunch. Waking up early to sneak into Perspi had been extremely tiring for a person who never had to wake up before noon. He fell asleep under Kiyotaka’s wing, which the angel noticed right away.

Kiyotaka sighed, but didn’t get up.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TG: i got it more than if it was right in my hand and i had a fucking death grip  
> TG: nothings gonna get past the dave strider eye of vigilance so dont try any shit


	4. Komaeda Kills the King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the komaeda childhood trauma train will not be making any stops. actually, it's not even a train. its a perpetual motion machine
> 
> also dave dirk and ishimaru go to taco bell at 4 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well i stopped updating due to some personal issues that went down in spring but i'm back now and probably unable to adhere to the chapter every month schedule
> 
> also probably shame for adding canon/oc shit but i love my shsl spy daisuke too much

All throughout the capital of Perspi, loud explosions could be heard. The air raid was still going on, and by now all the citizens had been evacuated to various bomb shelters scattered — well, _strategically placed_ — around the city. Everyone in the Imperial District had been relocated to the palace, as it was built to be as durable as a bomb shelter, if not stronger. Out of the many people taking shelter in the palace, one of them was Dave Strider, part of the heir’s guard. He was currently stationed outside Makoto’s room, which was a post that he normally didn’t take. Dave guarded the palace from the outside, but with the head guard unable to get there on time, it was up to Dave to be the big man and make sure nothing happened to the angel heir during the raid.

As the guard, Dave was currently...playing Flappy Bird on his phone. It would take nothing short of a national emergency to tear him away from his game, and considering the current air raid, it seemed that even _that_ wouldn’t be able to stop him. He had a goal he had his heart set on — to become the undefeated world champion of Flappy Bird. He would get a high score that was so large that nobody could even dream of defeating him, and it would be glorious. Dave was getting into the odd rhythm of playing the game — any actual rhythm could screw him up, but tapping the screen had long since turned into an odd, irregular beat that he quietly beatboxed to under his breath. He could do this, he felt the drive to win spewing from every orifice. If he had Eye Of The Tiger on his phone, he would have played it. Dave made a mental note to download it as soon as he had the chance.

Suddenly, his phone vibrated, causing Dave to drop it in shock. Flappy Bird immediately careened headfirst into a pipe without the angel guard’s taps keeping it aloft, the platinum medal next to his score glinting in mockery of him. The high score needed to get one was laughably low to him, at this point. It was nothing but chump change to him. If he could actually get those medals in real life, he could make good money selling them to people who sucked at the game and still wanted to seem good at it. However, his score was one point less than his leading one. Enraged by how close he was to his previous high score, Dave became a fountain of expletives. “Shit! Fuck! God damn it! Piss! Ass! Uh...” Unable to think of anything else to say, Dave glowered down at the incoming call screen, sighed, and finally answered the call. “Sup,” he said curtly into his phone.

“Dave! How are you doing down there?” The caller was Kiyotaka, of course, and Dave made an effort to modulate his voice around his boss the next time he spoke.

“Uh...pretty damn good, I’d say,” he replied. “It’s hella boring, though, it’s like if someone was just in the vents playing shitty explosion sounds! The ground isn’t even shaking or anything, isn’t that supposed to happen?”

“Be glad that it isn’t happening, then!” Kiyotaka’s voice came out as a harsh whisper. “Okay, that’s all I really wanted to ask of you. And even if I had more to say, I wouldn’t be able to! He’s sleeping.”

Dave frowned at the vagueness of that last statement. “Huh? Who’s sleeping? You got a kid up there, or something? How old is that dude, anyway?”

“No,” Kiyotaka replied. He refused to divulge any more information on the subject and moved on instead. “Goodbye, Dave...keep up the good work, all right? I’m counting on you to make sure that Makoto survives this!”

“You got it,” Dave replied. The call immediately cut off, and he went back to playing Flappy Bird with a vengeance. If someone else tried to bother him or call him again, he was going to ignore it. Unfortunately, an incoming call would screw up his game even if he didn’t try to take it. Sighing, Dave resigned himself to his fate of having his game ruined by phone calls. He wondered why Kiyotaka couldn’t sit in front of the door like he was supposed to. Besides, didn’t he just love guarding Makoto? This was the first time Dave really had to work, so maybe something crazy was happening up in that tower.

* * *

Dave was basically right. The heir of Drose was still asleep, and Kiyotaka didn’t have the heart to move and disturb him. Besides, if Nagito was awoken, he would probably start screaming because of the air raid again. At least his sleep didn’t seem to be disturbed by the frequent explosions.

Actually, the explosions had sent Nagito into another memory, one that had been buried so deeply he had hoped to forget it. However, it was one of his earliest and worst childhood traumas, easily beating out even the time he had learned Hajime was going to be his replacement, and so it would be forever and irreversibly etched into his memory. The only thing he could do to deal with it was shove it into the back of his mind and try his hardest to forget. He would never really be able to forget it, though.

* * *

Nagito had been five years old at the time. Late at night or early in the morning, an air raid on the Municipality had started. The deafening blasts woke him up and he started crying, but nobody came to help him. During the night, no servants came into the royal wing of the palace unless summoned, and the young heir’s cries were nowhere near loud enough for anyone to hear. Besides, he had no way to summon anyone, being too young to have the means provided to him. He and Hajime had been ruled as lacking enough judgment to be able to have that power, and it was true. They would probably summon someone in the middle of the night to do something ridiculous and laugh over it. 

However, the explosions terrified Nagito and he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t shake the feeling that any second, the ceiling above him would be shelled and he would be blown to bits. He tried throwing the blankets over himself and piling all of his pillows on top of his head, but the noises were barely muffled. Sniffling slightly, he threw them off, as it was getting hard to breathe. Now the room seemed too empty and the bed too big for one very scared five-year old boy. Taking a deep breath, he got out of bed and dropped to the floor. An explosion went off the second he touched the ground, and he tripped and fell in shock. Getting to his feet quickly, Nagito ran out of his room and down the hall.

He wanted to sleep with someone else, as the presence of another person would comfort him. However, he didn’t know where to go. His mother was always gone at night, busy with other things, Hajime would laugh at him and call him a wimp, then tell the entire palace that the heir of Drose was a wimp, and his aunt...well, Mukuro scared him, to be honest. That only left one person in the royal wing, his father. Nagito gulped. The king of Drose was not someone he wanted to disturb. He didn’t treat Nagito badly or anything, but he was always busy with something. He never seemed to have any time for his son. Maybe Nagito was going to disturb his father, or maybe his father would think that the heir of Drose shouldn’t have been afraid of explosions. He stopped, afraid of being reprimanded, but shook off the feeling and forced himself to continue on. If he was just sent out, Nagito could probably get his father to put him in bed again, or at least summon a servant to do it for him.

Nagito slowly pushed open the door to his father’s bedchamber and walked in. It was so dark that he could barely see anything even with his good night vision, which was vaguely unsettling. Nagito didn’t know how someone could make a room that dark, but then again, his father used to study dark magic. Or maybe the curtains were just closed and the lights were off. Nagito wondered why his father had to have his room that dark, but it wasn’t his place to ask. He could faintly see a lightswitch to his right, and so he carefully made his way over to it, afraid of tripping and falling over anything that might be on the ground.

When Nagito flipped on the lights, he was met with a scene he was completely unable to process. If the bombings hadn’t been so loud, he would have been able to hear what was going on — quiet gasps and muffled groans — but then again, he wouldn’t have been able to understand them. And so, he was left to stare in astonishment.

His father rolled over to look at who had come in the room. Freed from his spot under the king of Drose, another person — the head of intelligence, Nagito remembered — sat up and looked at the little heir in total shock. “I...um...” The spy rubbed his eyes and squinted at Nagito as if he wasn’t totally sure that the heir of Drose was actually there. And Nagito really was. “WHAT THE HELL!” he screamed, his already thick Northern Drosen accent getting even heavier. Shocked and overwhelmed, Nagito began screaming as well, and the two of them just screamed at each other until the heir of Drose passed out.

Some time later, Nagito came to and found himself tucked back in bed. Quite obviously, someone had returned him to his room after he had passed out after seeing...whatever that thing he had seen was. He didn’t understand what had happened, but maybe his cousin would. Hajime knew quite a lot for his young age. And so he got out of bed and left, searching for his cousin. It wasn’t hard to find him. Hajime was usually flying around the halls — or well, trying to, even though his wings still weren’t large enough to hold him aloft in the air. Nagito’s wings were, though, and so Hajime tried in an effort to be as good as him. And failed, usually.

It turned out that Hajime was stuck in one of the open windows in a hallway, uselessly flapping his wings as if his flailing around would get him out of there. Nagito ran over to him and pulled him down, but Hajime wasn’t as grateful for his assistance as he expected.

“Hey! I could have flown out of there! You don’t have to keep showing off,” Hajiime complained, defensively unfolding his wings more so they looked bigger. 

“Showing off? How’s flying out of a window showing off? That’s normal stuff,” Nagito pointed out. Just then, someone flew out of the hall through the window, proving his point.

Hajime frowned. “Well...I was just — I was looking at what happened after the air raid!” He hopped up onto the windowsill again and looked over at the bombed out buildings surrounding the palace. Huge clouds of dust and smoke filled the air, blotting out what little sunlight reached the Municipality. “I didn’t even notice there was an air raid, anyway. I slept through it! We can’t be bombed, Mom says the Perspi air force is shitty. They use the same formations over and over again, or something.”

“Then why did they almost hit us?” Nagito asked.

Hajime shrugged. “What, are you scared or something? They didn’t hit us, look!” He laughed, but his cousin didn’t laugh with him.

“I hate explosions,” Nagito said quietly. “That’s — actually I have something to tell you about it! So the explosions woke me up, and I was scared so I went to Dad’s room.”

“You _what?!_ ” Hajime exclaimed, cutting Nagito off. “Maybe you’re not as wimpy as I thought! Nobody goes and sees him! He could have hexed you! Or wait!” Hajime gasped and stepped close, examining his cousin for any traces of dark magic. “Did he?”

“I was just scared,” Nagito replied. “I had to do something. And Dad wouldn’t hex anyone. Mom would, though, she asked him how. He wouldn’t tell her.”

“Wow,” Hajime said, getting even closer to his cousin, staring in wonder. “How did that work out?”

“Badly,” Nagito admitted. “I screamed and passed out.”

Hajime gasped. “That was you screaming? I thought it was a ghost or a banshee or whatever!”

“You’re lying!” Nagito snapped, sure that his cousin was just trying to make fun of him again. “You just said that you didn’t wake up because of the air raid! Or were you lying about that, then?”

“Your screaming was a lot closer,” Hajime replied. “It sounded a lot louder to me. I’m surprised everyone didn’t wake up ‘cause of you! But what happened? Why were you screaming?”

“Well I went in Dad’s room, because I was scared and wanted to sleep with him, but someone was already there! It was...” Nagito trailed off, struggling to remember who it was. His shock and fear had tampered his memory, but the person’s voice had been familiar. Only one person in the Municipality that he knew of spoke like that. “The spy guy who works here, the one from up north.”

Hajime frowned. “What was he doing in there?”

“He’s Dad’s bartender, too,” Nagito replied, shrugging his wings. “But he wasn’t making any drinks. I don’t know what he was doing with Dad...they were in bed but weren’t asleep, and they...didn’t have clothes on? What was up with that?”

“Oh,” Hajime said, his eyes wide in understanding. “ _Oh._ ” He reached out with a wing and pulled his cousin closer, speaking in a quiet, confidential tone. “Do you know what sex is?” he asked.

“No, nobody ever told me when I asked,” Nagito replied, frowning. “They just said I’m too young or something. But you’re not?”

“That’s why I don’t want to be the heir like you are,” Hajime said. “Everyone shelters you. I know stuff because Mom’s too busy to be watching me. I don’t even need to be watched, I’m gonna be in the military like her! I have to be tough, nobody’s gotta watch tough people. What do your parents do, just sit there? My mom’s probably winning the war for us! And my dad died in battle.”

“Yeah, I guess...I don’t know what they do!” Nagito replied. “Maybe they don’t do anything.”

Hajime laughed and lowered his voice even more. “I think your dad is bored of doing nothing, then, because I think you’re only supposed to do sex with people you’re married to. Or people you really like, or whatever.”

“Huh? ‘Only supposed to’ sounds like an order thing,” Nagito pointed out. “I dunno, though, maybe Mom would be mad, like when...when people eat her food or something! The only rule here is don’t make her mad. Do you think she’ll be mad?”

“Maybe! But wow, really, the spy from up north? He talks weird! We can talk better than he can,” Hajime said. “Why’s your dad like him, barely anything he says makes sense!”

“I think they have a different language up north! Nobody from there ever comes here, so he had to learn by himself,” Nagito explained. “Sometimes he says things in that language, it sounds different when he talks. And he writes weird, too! There’s stuff like...backwards Rs and backwards Ns and a lot of weird letters nobody uses here.”

“People from up north are weird,” Hajime commented. “Mom says some of them have been fighting our soldiers even though we’re all on the same side! Or we have to be, anyway. They’re demons too, so what’s up with that? But aw man, I can’t believe you saw that! You get to see everything, you’re lucky!”

Nagito stepped back, not understanding his cousin’s eagerness to see that. After all, Hajime had known that Nagito had screamed and fainted because of it. “Wait, you _want_ to see that? It was really scary, I got yelled at! Well, kinda anyway, the head of intelligence was screaming too. I think I scared him.”

“It would mean I’m not a little kid anymore! Only little kids don’t know about sex,” Hajime said decisively. Nagito glared at him, and he conceded, “Little kids _and_ people who are sheltered by their parents. But wow, I gotta tell someone about this! This is amazing! Um...I don’t have anyone to tell, actually,” he realized, his wings drooping. “Maybe I can tell Mom. She’ll be proud of me for figuring out stuff, I think.”

“You won’t get in trouble?” Nagito gasped. “I can’t tell my parents anything, they just make me go away when I try!”

“No, Mom’s too busy to say things about stuff I tell her,” Hajime replied. “I could say I killed a guy and she’d just say ‘that’s nice’ and go back to work or something. Actually, she’d be happy that I killed a guy ‘cause I’d be starting early! She says I have to join the military like her and Dad. Anyway, I’m gonna go tell her now. Bye!” Before Nagito could even tell him that telling Mukuro was a horrible idea, Hajime turned and ran through the halls, calling for his mother as loud as he could.

It really _was_ a horrible idea, far more horrible than Nagito could have even envisioned when he had wanted to warn his cousin.

Mukuro, of course, had told her sister as soon as she received that information from Hajime. Junko was furious that her husband seemed to be having an affair, let alone one with someone from Northern Drose. She hated the northerners, with their strange language and writing, their land so far away and isolated with a mountain range they could have been a different country. They didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of Drose.

Northern Drose had been the last part of the country to turn to chaos. The angels there had been brutal and boorish, and they used their adaptation to the north’s harsh environment to their advantage against the demons. Junko’s own uncle, the king of Drose before his deposition, had led the army against the northerners himself. When the demons had won and secured the north, the northerners named their greatest city after him. However, the northerners were not entirely content. The Municipality sometimes received rumors about an independence movement in the north seeking to break free of Drose. Junko was sure that was why that northerner bastard was even in the Municipality in the first place. He was a spy, after all — he could be spying for the separatists. And he had seduced her husband to do that. She was angry, angry that somebody had taken away someone who was supposed to be _hers_ , angry that her husband seemingly didn’t care about her enough to have an affair, especially an affair with some idiot who couldn’t even speak right.

When the queen of Drose was angry, people died.

The next morning, the king of Drose was found dead in his bedchamber from gunshot wounds. The murder weapon was found on the floor — a seven-shot revolver from Northern Drose. There were no records of northern firearms ever being imported to the Municipality. However records were never kept, conveniently enough. Even so, the records were investigated, and it was concluded that the assassin had most likely come from the north themselves. There was only one demon who had come to the Municipality from that province in centuries: the head of intelligence. It couldn’t be anyone else who had come from the north either — shortly after his arrival, the border between the northern province and the rest of the kingdom had been closed by royal decree. 

And, most incriminatingly, the head of intelligence was only carrying one revolver with him that day, when normally he had two. Since he kept his firearms hidden in his pants, there was only a very slim chance that somebody had wanted to borrow one of his guns.

Combined with the fact that there was an independence movement in Northern Drose, it could be deduced that the head of intelligence was really a double agent and had been spying for the separatists, and he had assassinated the king on their orders. Nagito noticed that his mother mentioned nothing about the affair. He guessed that she didn’t want the public to know that the king of Drose had apparently preferred a much-reviled northerner to her.

Junko explained this all to a large crowd of demons in the plaza in front of the palace, waving the assassin’s weapon above her head like some kind of banner. A few steps behind her, Nagito cowered by, keeping the hem of his mother’s dress in a death grip so strong that his his fingers had turned white. If she wasn’t so busy riling up the crowd, she would have scolded her son for wrinkling her skirt and looking weak in front of the populace. The sight of his father’s dead body had sent the young heir into a state of shock, and he had needed to be physically moved to the plaza, where the entire remaining royal family was in attendance. Mukuro stood off to the side, stoic as ever, and her son Hajime joined the crowd in shouting and throwing things at the head of intelligence, who had been arrested in his office that morning and tethered to the flagpole in the center of the plaza. Despite the insults and various objects being hurled at him, the spy did not flinch away, instead standing as stoically as Mukuro was.

Concluding her speech by pointing out that the spy’s lack of reaction probably meant that all the charges against him were entirely correct, Junko summoned several guards that pushed through the crowd, pointing rifles at the head of intelligence. 

“Any last words?” asked the queen.

The head of intelligence said something in his native language, staring down the barrels of the guns pointed at him. Silence swept over the crowd as people realized he hadn’t said anything comprehensible.

“Okay, whatever,” Junko said, waving her hand in front of her face as if the spy was just an overgrown pest. Then, she turned to the firing squad. “Fire!” 

Seven rifles went off.

The bullets tore through the spy and he collapsed instantly without so much as a word or even an exclamation of pain. The crowd screamed and cheered and ran in to kick his body. Nagito, whose memories of the head of intelligence were more pleasant, covered himself with his wings and whimpered. 

Nobody knew if the head of intelligence had died immediately after being shot or not.

Though the spy’s blood had been immediately washed off the plaza ground, the heir of Drose could see the ghostly residue of it every time he looked at that spot by the flag, even years after the execution. He always left the palace by flying out a window.

An execution that major had been broadcasted throughout the entire country, including Northern Drose. This was a major sign to the separatists — if they actually tried to act against the rest of the country, they would surely be crushed. The independence movement dissolved soon after the execution. It helped that one of the major separatists was the head of intelligence’s mother. Instead of seeing her son as some kind of martyr for the cause, the execution of her son deeply upset her and she dissolved the movement before the government could do any more damage.

Among the family, the only demons who knew about the affair, Nagito was cheered for finding out about the affair and by extension, the double agent the northern separatists had planted in the capital. However, his mother took him aside and hissed in his ear that it was all his fault the king was dead, as if she would have let the affair pass if she had never learned about it. This was how he had started to fall out of his mother’s favor. Once that was in motion, it was inevitable that she would end up hating him. 

And that was how Nagito ended up realizing certain things.

The first king of Drose was Izuru Kamukura, and he had been thought of as invincible due to his resilience in battle. He was assassinated by a usurper.

The second king of Drose was only ever known as the usurper, and he was overthrown by Izuru’s son and niece, but not killed. He had a position in the government so he would be content enough to keep from creating another coup.

The third king of Drose was Yasuke Matsuda, and he wasn’t even the original heir. His older brother had died, leaving him. He had only ever wanted to be a dark mage and not a king, but he was the only one left, and he was forced to marry his cousin among other things. He was assassinated too, allegedly by the northern-born head of intelligence, Daisuke Serizawa, who was caught, charged with treason, and killed.

Nagito didn’t believe that was the case, though. He knew Daisuke, and he didn’t exactly seem like a treacherous kind of person. Even if he truly never cared for the king of Drose, at the very least, he was usually too inebriated to be able to carry out an assassination like that. Nagito was sure that his mother, wanting all the power for herself, killed her own husband and framed the spy he was having an affair with. An affair was a convenient excuse to do that. An affair with someone connected to the separatists was even more convenient excuse. She could get rid of her obstructive husband and break up the separatists, all in one fell swoop.

He didn’t put it past her, anyway.

Whatever had really happened honestly didn’t matter to him. No matter what, it marked the beginning of Nagito’s fall from grace. Sometimes, he would think of things he could have done to avoid what had happened, but it was to no avail. Perhaps he shouldn’t have innocently asked his cousin if he knew what his father and Daisuke had been doing. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so innocent and sheltered in the first place. If he had known better, he could have certainly figured out that there was an affair going on. Once, he had walked into Daisuke’s office to find his father there, sitting on the spy’s desk. Facing the window the desk was in front of, he didn’t notice his son enter the room behind him. Daisuke was sitting with him, running his hand over Nagito’s father’s wings in long, firm strokes. It was such a quietly intimate thing that even Nagito knew he would be interrupting if he went to see his friend, and the little heir turned and left in search of his cousin instead.

Looking back at it now, it was so obvious that Nagito could have laughed at his younger self. Wings were rather sensitive, and repeatedly touching them could be soothing...or arousing. No matter the intent, it was definitely an intimate gesture. He knew that for sure, because he could feel someone stroking his wings _at that exact moment!_

Still half asleep, Nagito sat up violently and screamed. Kiyotaka froze, instantly dropping the hand that had been stroking Nagito’s wing to his side. “I’m so sorry, it was a —” he began, but Nagito flapped away into a corner.

“What the fuck were you doing?” the heir spat, glaring over at a bewildered Kiyotaka, who was still sitting in the middle of the bed.

“Well, you started shaking while you were asleep!” Kiyotaka began explaining. “And I didn’t know what else I could do to calm you down, so I just —” He sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Nagito frowned at him. “Well, don’t do that again. I don’t know how you angels work, but in Drose, touching wings is, well...” He knew about Kiyotaka’s fixation, and he supposed it was like a kid drawn to shiny things. “I didn’t expect you to do it, but...thanks for trying to calm me down, I guess?” He scoffed. “I guess you’re not as mindlessly in love with that comatose angel as I thought. If _I_ was in your position, I’d have let someone like me suffer. After all, I did do that to Makoto —”

“Do _not_ bring him up!” yelled Kiyotaka, not wanting to hear any more about Makoto from the demon heir. Every time Makoto was brought up by his own attacker, Kiyotaka felt sick and wrong for not hating Nagito as he should have. But when he tried to muster up that hate, it turned out that he really didn’t have it in him. Perhaps feeling sick and wrong was justified, after all.

“Maybe I misjudged you,” Nagito said. “You _are_ a mindless drone after all. Can’t handle some demon scum like me saying the name of your pure little heir? Well, you know, he’s not the paragon of perfection you seem to think he is. I mean, many people here have lived for hundreds of years. Everyone’s done something wrong at some point in their lives. Even —”

“I won’t have you saying anything else! That’s enough!” Kiyotaka interrupted, getting off the bed and walking to the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to leave. The air raid’s over, and I need to see how Dave’s handled guarding Makoto! If he let any harm come to him, I’ll —” He paused, realizing that if a bomb had hit Makoto’s room, Dave would probably be dead as well. There was nothing he could do in that situation but impotently vent his anger.

“Well, whatever. Have fun with those mindless little order-lovers,” Nagito said mockingly as the guard left. As soon as Kiyotaka was gone, though, his scorn faded. He sighed, wondering what his plan of action was. Was he going to get Kiyotaka on his side or continue to mock him? The first option would be more helpful to him, but the second option was more natural for one as opposed to angels as he was. Whatever he was trying, he had to choose, or the mixed signals he was sending would muddle his plan so much that it would be rendered unviable.

Nagito sighed. Maybe the right thing to do was none of the above. Maybe he would just have to die. It wasn’t like he had anything substantial to go back to, anyway. Nobody cared about him, not even his family. His only friend had died when Nagito was five, and that friend had possibly been a traitor. The best thing for the war effort would be for him to die, anyway. Then Hajime would get the role he had always been suited for, and maybe his family would use his death as an excuse for the demons to fight harder, even if they had never cared before. It was the right thing to do in the long run. All he needed to do was accept that he had failed, had fallen into the trap his mother had set up for him. He could sacrifice himself for the country. Executions made him think of Daisuke, and how he had held out to the very end. If Nagito could follow his example, and Drose saw, maybe they would finally think he was worth something. Going quietly to his death and accepting it with dignity didn’t seem that hard.

But...he didn’t want to. He was still the heir of Drose, and that meant he should have gotten more respect than he currently had. All he wanted was for people to treat him the way he deserved to be treated, and wasting away in enemy territory before being publically killed was definitely _not_ what the heir to the demon kingdom deserved. If he could get his way, he would somehow escape the tower, escape the Citadel and Perspi itself, and confront his mother. Maybe then she would accept him, since he had gotten out of her trap. But the truth of the matter was, he hadn’t done that yet, and he didn’t even know if the first thing was possible, let alone everything else. Being in Perspi was severely damaging to his psyche, anyway. With nothing to do but sit and think, he had brought back traumatic memories from decades ago. If this continued, he would be too upset about his past to do anything about his present situation. It also reminded him of how things were at home — what was the use of going back to that life? 

Then again, he was in the middle of enemy territory. Everyone there hated him just because of what he was. His mother and cousin had a bit more of a reason to hate him — no matter how weak and unfair he thought it was, it wasn’t just because he was the heir of Drose. He just needed to change himself somehow, and maybe his family would finally accept him. Getting out of the tower was a good first step.

Nagito sighed, wishing he wasn’t so useless.

* * *

Outside of Makoto’s room, Dave Strider was still sitting and playing his game when Kiyotaka found him. Spotting someone arriving, Dave quickly turned off his phone and set it in his lap.

“Sup,” he called out. 

“How’s Makoto doing?” Kiyotaka asked him, barely even acknowledging the greeting.

Dave snorted. “Chill, dude. He’s totally fine, look.” Dave pushed open the door and gestured with his wing at Makoto lying on his bed. Everything was the same. Makoto, of course, hadn’t moved, and the machinery he was hooked up too whirred quietly. “See, he’s as fine as a comatose dude can get, I have a feeling that guy’s fucking invincible or something. Hell, if a bomb actually hit us it would probably deflect off his fucking body and blast the bombers out of the air like a scene out of a goddamn movie. That would be way cool, I’m not gonna lie. And while I’m thinking of movies —”

“Do _not_ open the door to Makoto’s room without permission!” Kiyotaka reprimanded, cutting Dave off before he could go off on a tangent again.

“Why, he’s in a fucking coma so he can’t exactly be like, ‘hey Dave, come in’ or whatever,” Dave challenged. “And what if that demon assassin breaks out of that fucking tower and tries to finish killing Makoto? Are you gonna wait for permission then, cause I think you don’t need to be so goddamn hung up over dealing with him, you act like it’s a goddamn minefield where one wrong step and oh shit, he hates you forever now. You need to chill,” Dave concluded, taking a deep breath after his winding rant.

“You don’t know what it’s like!” Kiyotaka replied. “I am his head guard, so I have more responsibility for the heir’s wellbeing!” Actually loving Makoto helped quite a bit, as well. “If something happened to him, people would blame me for it, to some extent. _I_ would blame myself for it! And someone who is as involved with him as I am should try to be in his good graces, at least.”

“Alright,” Dave said, standing up and stretching. He was sore from sitting on the floor for hours. “Well, seems like that air raid’s finally over, how about that. I was sitting on my ass over here for way too long. And it’s...” He checked his phone for the time, then shoved it in his pocket. “It’s like, four in the morning, holy shit. Bro’s probably done with his shit now too, I’m gonna go hang out with him. I need a fucking break.” Dave began walking down the hall, then paused to turn towards Kiyotaka. “Hey, you wanna come with us or something?”

“It’s four in the morning!” Kiyotaka repeated. “What are you even going to _do_ at this time?”

“Get some food,” Dave replied with a noncommittal shrug. 

“Why would you be out this late?” Kiyotaka asked. “Sensible people who don’t have night shifts shouldn’t be up at these times! Especially getting food, we’re at war!”

“Dude, we’ve like, always been at war,” Dave pointed out, crossing his arms. “Nobody gives a shit about rationing and stuff anymore, we’ve just learned to deal with it after what, a thousand years or something? And another thing,” he began before Kiyotaka could interrupt, “of course there’s people up at this time, how the hell would places be open if there weren’t?”

“Really? It’s not just you and your brother being anomalies?” Kiyotaka asked in genuine curiosity. “And I thought you two were too chaotic to be in the Imperial District, let alone so close to the royal family!”

“Hey. Don’t say that,” Dave told him with a frown, waggling a wing. “Look at these fucking wings, I am all for order.”

“You...you’re right,” Kiyotaka said. “Sorry about that! I shouldn’t accuse you of being an enemy when I just finished dealing with one.”

“Okay yeah, how’d that work out?” Dave asked. “Is he telling you shit or something, because you were up there for a while. And what was up with you talking hella quietly on the phone? Is this some weird kind of interrogation shit I don’t know about?”

“No, the heir of Drose was panicking because of the air raid, so I got him to sleep.” Dave looked at him in intrigue, and even though his eyes couldn’t be seen due to his shades Kiyotaka knew from his lack of comments that he was really judging. “He was getting really agitated!” he added. “If I didn’t do something, he could have attacked me! I couldn’t even leave, because of the air raid...I had to do something!”

Dave’s only response was a shrug. He pulled his phone out again and frowned at something on it. “Are you for fucking real? Bro thinks I got blown up, what a jackass. Doesn’t he realize I’m not his kid brother anymo —” Catching Kiyotaka looking at him, Dave quickly shut his mouth and put his phone back in his pocket. “Well, I’m going. Take it or leave it ‘cause I sure as shit am not gonna wait around any more.”

“Um.” For a while, Kiyotaka did nothing but stare at Dave’s retreating figure mutely. “Well, it’s not my shift...” he began. He turned around and saw that one of the other guards was standing at the door already. “Well, I _should_ go to sleep, but...Hm.” He sighed. It would do well for him to try to be more friendly to others, something he couldn’t normally do, since most of his time had previously been dedicated to guarding Makoto. Now that he technically had less work, he could spend time with some other people. Kiyotaka didn’t know exactly how normal interactions worked, but then again, Dave and his brother weren’t exactly what he could call _normal_. “Dave! Wait up!” he called, running after the other guard. Dave’s pace slowed a little, and he let Kiyotaka catch up to him.

“You coming?” Dave asked, and Kiyotaka nodded. Dave smiled a little and continued walking on: down the stairs, out of the castle, and finally to the circular road that bordered the Imperial District. He approached another angel who was pacing around by a bench. He looked similar to Dave, though his hair was lighter, but what really proved they were siblings was the fact that the other angel was also wearing shades. His, however, were even stranger than Dave’s, as the lenses were shaped like triangles. Unlike Dave’s sunglasses, these had no normal counterparts.

“Hey Dirk,” Dave said.

His brother let out an audible sigh of relief when he saw the two angels approaching. “Hey, there you are, Dave,” he said, returning his brother’s greeting. “I was pretty goddamn concerned about you for a second there. I know you never miss a thing.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m on top of everything usually, but I just...” Dave sighed. He was known for his perfect internal clock, something that the order-loving angels admired. If he suddenly failed up to show up on time right after a bombing had taken place...well, no wonder Dirk had been so concerned. However, Dave had only been late because of Flappy Bird and Kiyotaka speaking to him. “It’s ‘cause of that guy,” he said flatly, pointing to Kiyotaka.

“Huh?” Dirk asked, then saw who his brother was talking about. Instantly, his posture stiffened as his thoughts turned to his duties. “Oh, um. Hey. Didn’t think I’d see you around here at this time. Is there something you needed? Are you finally considering installing my automated security systems? I have some prototypes already built, if you want to check them out —”

“No, no, I just want to go with you. To get...food...?” Kiyotaka trailed off, still unsure that people were still up and about in the Citadel that early in the morning. “I’m not here for work-related reasons if that’s what you think! I do other things sometimes...or I’d like to start, anyway.”

Dirk huffed and shoved his hands in his pockets. “And you still won’t give my designs the time of day? Fucking _harsh_ , dude.”

“I’m sorry, but I just think I could guard Makoto better than any computer could!” Kiyotaka said. “I don’t mean to offend you or insult your skills...but it’s just what I think.”

“Yeah, let’s just get some food,” Dirk said, shrugging. “Same place as usual, right Dave?”

“Why the hell would we go to some other place?” Dave asked. “You think we’re demon douchebags or something?”

“Okay, okay, follow me,” Dirk said to Kiyotaka, then spread his wings and flew off away from the District. It was early in the morning, so nobody was around to tell them flying around could cause an accident. Dave instantly followed, and after a moment’s hesitation, Kiyotaka did as well.

“Speaking of demon douchebags, though,” Dave was saying to his brother, “Kiyotaka here’s gotta deal with one of them. And it’s like, the top dog of demon douchebaggery, too! Uh, almost, anyway.”

Dirk nodded. “Yeah, I heard. You captured the heir of Drose?” He whistled. “Damn. Wish I could have been around to see that.”

“Well...it was frightening!” Kiyotaka replied. “That demon was trying to kill Makoto! I’m glad I was there for him...it could certainly be much worse! Not that it’s not already bad, or anything...”

“Mmm,” Dave said, nodding in acknowledgement. “Well, we’re here.” The three angels landed in front of some fast food place with gaudy neon signs and bright lights streaming out of the storefront that only seemed to highlight how empty the place was. Aside from the employees, there was nobody there.

“Are you serious?” Kiyotaka blurted as soon as he saw the place.

“Don’t ask me, Dirk loves this shit,” Dave told him. “Me, I couldn’t care less. You like tacos?”

“Well...I could try one!” Kiyotaka said, going in after Dirk, who had already gotten inside and was placing his order.

“...yeah, I’ll have four of those, and two more for these guys over here,” Dirk was saying when they came in. Dave pulled on Kiyotaka’s arm and dragged him into a booth.

“So. Could you tell me about how you’re dealing with the heir of Drose?” Dave requested. “I dunno, it just seems like some major shit to me.”

“He’s...kind of sad, actually!” Kiyotaka replied. “From what I’ve heard, his family doesn’t love him! So maybe he isn’t that much of an enemy...? No, that doesn’t make sense!” He shook his head, trying to set his thoughts straight. All demons were enemies, no matter the details of their personal lives. It was just how things were.

“Well, are you sure he’s just not saying that?” Dave asked. At that moment Dirk came back with some tacos, passing two to Dave and Kiyotaka and keeping the other four for himself. He ate in earnest, and Dave just sighed and picked at his. “So...are you saying you pity a fucking demon?” Dave whispered to Kiyotaka. He looked around to see if any of the employees were listening in, but they appeared to be busy.

“I don’t know...do I?” Kiyotaka frowned and tried to think as he ate his food. Nagito’s life seemed to be sad...but there was one thing he couldn’t get over. “No. Absolutely not! He tried to kill Makoto! And Makoto’s my...!” He stopped, not wanting to tell the Strider brothers about how much he loved the heir of Perspi. But that, perhaps, was a problem. Did he really love Makoto that much if he wasn’t willing to admit it? One thing was for sure, going out to eat with Dave and Dirk wasn’t helping anything. It wasn’t part of his routine, and maybe the added chaos was corrupting him.

“I’m sorry!” he said, quickly finishing his taco and stepping out of the booth. “I shouldn’t...I shouldn’t have come here!” With that, Kiyotaka flew out into early-morning air, not even waiting for a reply from the Strider brothers. The sun had yet to rise, and he barely cast a shadow on the darkened streets of the Citadel. As he flew closer to the Imperial District and palace, he realized that the tower’s lights were still on. Surely, its occupant was still up and about, for reasons he couldn’t place.

“What’s Nagito thinking about?” he asked himself quietly. In the early morning, with nobody else around, idly thinking of the demon heir was almost okay enough for him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you didn't catch it, northern drose is basically russia. which means
> 
> DA DA DAISUKE  
> Lover of the Drosen king  
> They didn't quit, they wanted his head  
> DA DA DAISUKE  
> North Drose's greatest love machine  
> And so they shot him till he was dead


End file.
